Most Precious Blood (19 page)

Val felt a pain as intense as any she'd suffered during the past week. “Why?” she asked. “Just because of Saturday?”

“How honest do you want me to be?” Kit asked.

“I don't know,” Val said. “Start at completely, and if I can't handle it, I'll tell you.”

“All right,” Kit said. “I don't come off real good in this version.”

“Nobody has,” Val replied. “Not recently.”

A flock of birds flew overhead in a V-shape. “It must be nice to do that,” Kit said. “Change your life every six months.”

“They're always birds,” Val said. “That doesn't change.”

“I'd still like to give it a try,” Kit declared. “All right. The truth. The truth is Mother never wanted us to be friends. She never wanted me to go to Most Precious Blood. It was bad enough as far as she was concerned that I was Catholic, I didn't have to be brought up as one. Only Pop insisted. Do you remember, when we were little, Mother never brought me over to your house. It was always Pop. She wasn't even drinking then, not much at any rate, but she never went to your house. She wouldn't let Kevin anywhere near it. Rick wanted to go to a baseball game once with Pop and Kevin, and Mother forbade it. She told Pop she'd leave him and she'd take Kevin with her and he'd never find them again if he let Rick anywhere near Kevin. Part of me didn't understand that, but most of me was jealous that she loved Kevin enough to protect him. Maybe she felt I was already lost, or maybe she just didn't care that much about me.”

“Amanda hates us that much?” Val asked. “I never thought she hated me.”

“Mother hates everybody,” Kit replied. “Except maybe for Kevin. She and Pop negotiated. Made quid pro quo agreements. Mother would be nice to you, civil to Rick and Barbara. In exchange for which none of the other Castaladis would ever be invited to our house, and Kevin would be sent to prep school. I called Kevin at school yesterday, to ask him how it was he got sent off to school when he was twelve, and he told me that was the deal. He begged to go before then, but Pop wouldn't let him. That's one of the things he hates Pop for, making him stay at home. There are lots of other things too, of course. Kevin's a first-class hater. He takes after Mother that way.”

“Like what?” Val asked. “What other things?”

Kit shrugged. “Nothing big,” she said. “It doesn't take big things if you're primed for hating. You want an example? When Kevin was at school, I guess he was sixteen, Pop got tickets for a Giants game. Three tickets on the fifty-yard line. He offered them as a bribe to Kevin to get him to come home for a weekend. He told him to bring a friend, but by that point Kevin wasn't bringing anyone home, so Pop said he'd take Kevin and me instead. Only he mentioned the tickets to Rick, who said he wanted them, so naturally Pop let Rick have them. And Kevin didn't come home. He skipped Thanksgiving too that year, and he was threatening to miss Christmas too, only I called him up and begged him. Mother was in awful shape, and I was afraid she'd kill herself if Kevin didn't show up for Christmas. He stayed two days, and all he did was scream at Pop about the damn football game. I mean it was nothing. I didn't mind giving you the tickets, but to Kevin it was a mortal sin. No, that isn't right. It was a convenient symbol of everything Pop had given up for Rick. Kevin's always been fond of convenient symbols, like boycotting home for the holidays.”

Val remembered the game, the perfection of the day, the silver fox coat. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I wish you'd gone instead of us.”

“One game wouldn't have made any difference,” Kit replied. “It just gave Kevin something else to be angry about. Kevin likes being angry. He likes it more than Mother does. That's why he doesn't drink.”

Val rested her back against one of the evergreens. “You must have been angry too,” she said. “Not just because of the football game. Because of everything.”

Kit shook her head. “I was more jealous than anything else,” she replied. “Jealous because you had a big wonderful family of cousins and aunts and uncles, and Mother wouldn't let me near them. I used to picture you and Michelle together playing with dolls while I'd be home alone reading. I didn't even like dolls and I never much liked Michelle and I was jealous anyway. Then at school the other kids' mothers wouldn't let me play with them. You never seemed to mind that, I guess because you had so much family, but it bothered me a lot.”

“You should have told Daddy,” Val said. “Maybe he could have done something.”

Kit laughed. “What?” she said. “Gotten half the school transferred to Detroit? It was okay after a while. I figured things out pretty fast. If I was nice to everybody, then everybody would be nice back to me. So what if they weren't my friends. You were, and I didn't need anything more than that. Only I couldn't risk losing you, so I did whatever you wanted, and after a while, I got to thinking it was your due, sort of the way Pop feels about Rick. It was right that everybody loved you and kissed you and acted as though you were special. You were special, and I was lucky that you let me be your friend.”

“But you were special too,” Val said. “You were always the smartest girl in our class. You've always done best in school.”

“I didn't have any choice,” Kit said. “I flunked a test once, in sixth grade, just to see what would happen. Pop had to sign it, Mother was too drunk to, and he looked straight at me and said he would have been nothing, nothing, without his brains, and the only chance I had in life was if I applied myself a hundred percent all the time and got the grades I was capable of. So I did. There was a year I used to punish myself for every point under a hundred I got on any of my tests. Don't ask me how. It was pretty gross.”

“I wish you'd told me,” Val said.

“Why?” Kit asked. “What could you have done? Besides, your mother was sick. You cried a lot that year. I didn't want to make things worse for you.”

“You still should have told me,” Val said. “We were friends. I would have listened.”

“I know that,” Kit said. “I knew it then. I knew you loved me. You were a trusty. You saw Mother drunk, and you loved me anyway. Up until this week, I would have killed for you, the same as Pop would do for Rick.”

“What happened this week?” Val asked.

“I found out you weren't a Castaladi,” Kit declared. “Dumb, isn't it? But all of a sudden I thought why am I doing all this for her? Why am I protecting her and defending her and helping her with her schoolwork and wiping away her tears when she isn't special at all? She's as much a nothing as I am. And I didn't have any answers. Hell, there's no trick to being adopted. Anyone can be adopted.”

“You're wrong,” Val said. “There are plenty of tricks to being adopted.”

“Maybe I'm wrong about everything,” Kit said. “But Thursday Malcolm came over because he knew I needed him, and you must have known how much I needed him, but you whisked him away from me anyway, just because you were too impatient to wait for Bruno to get off the phone. That never would have bothered me before, because you were Val Castaladi, and that was your right. Only on Thursday, you weren't Val Castaladi anymore, you were just some stranger leading Val Castaladi's life, and you lost your right to take what you wanted from me. I didn't know it then, but I had started to hate you.”

Val began to cry. She felt vulnerable and exposed, standing outside crying, even though the fence kept the world from seeing her weep, and Kit no longer cared what she did, how she felt.

“Stop it,” Val said. “Do you have any idea of what I've been through this week? Do you have any idea what I'm feeling?”

“I don't even care,” Kit said. “No, that isn't true. I do care, but it's just force of habit. When you spend sixteen years caring, it's kind of hard to stop.”

Val continued to cry. She realized she expected Kit to find a packet of tissues and hand them to her. Kit always carried the tissues. Only Kit wasn't even looking. So she picked up her pocketbook and searched herself. She couldn't find any.

“Here,” Kit said, taking some tissues out of her pocket. “Use these.”

Val took them and blew her nose. “What's to become of me?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” Kit replied. “But I think it's up to you.”

Val nodded. “I wish it weren't,” she said. “I liked it better with the lies. It was easier then.”

“I liked it better then too,” Kit said.

Val wiped away her tears and took a deep breath. “How are things with you and Jamey?” she asked. “Did you go to the play together?”

Kit shook her head. “I went with Malcolm after all,” she said. “Pop spent the day wiping Rick's tears.”

“I'm sorry,” Val said.

“It wasn't your fault,” Kit replied. “Besides, there was something I wanted to talk to Malcolm about. An idea I had.”

“Can I ask what?” Val said.

Kit laughed. “Of course you can ask,” she said. “I may hate you, but that doesn't mean we're not best friends. I wanted to know if there were any colleges that took you a year before graduating. Malcolm said there were, that there was a kid in his high school class who skipped senior year and went right into college instead. He said he was sure I could handle it academically, and he thought it would be the best thing possible for me emotionally. I really love Malcolm. It's like having a sane version of Kevin around.”

Val knew she didn't want Kit to go, knew that Kit wouldn't be allowed to if Rick told Jamey to forbid it. For a single blazing moment she hated Kit for deserting her as much as she'd hated Michelle for telling her the truth. She wanted to strike Kit, as she'd struck Michelle, but she held herself back. She'd learned other ways of getting what she wanted from her father. She knew better than to hit.

Kit seemed oblivious to Val's fury. “I love the idea of leaving,” she declared. “But I still have this year to get through. And I'm not sure Pop and Mother could survive if I weren't around. I don't know. Maybe this clinic is the answer for Mother. Maybe Pop'll quit his job, become a Legal Services lawyer. I've decided to paint my bedroom ashes of roses. Maybe I'll like it so much I won't want to leave.” She smiled at Val.

Val looked at her friend and really saw her for the first time. Force of habit, she thought. And then she remembered what Sister Gina Marie had said about shaking up the pieces, changing the pattern. “If it's important to you to go, I'll talk to Daddy,” she said, knowing that was the only gift remaining she could offer to Kit.

“You would?” Kit asked. “You would do that?”

Val nodded.

“But who'll look after you?” Kit asked. “If I'm not around.”

“Lots of people,” Val said. “I have family.” She laughed. “I have family up the kazoo it seems.”

“That's right,” Kit said. “What was it like? Do you have brothers and sisters now?”

“Thousands of them,” Val replied. “I met one.” She paused for a moment, knowing she should tell Kit, knowing she would have without even thinking about it the week before. “A sister,” she said. “Older than me. Well, they're all older than me. I have another sister who goes to Marymount and three older brothers too.”

“Wow,” Kit said. “When you stop being an only child, you go all the way.”

“Daddy's been giving them money all along,” Val said. “Whatever they have, it's because of him. Carmela, my mother, said I've been supporting them. It makes me feel dirty somehow, like I've been selling myself, but I haven't even known it. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Kit said. “But I know the feeling.”

“I don't know who I am anymore,” Val said. “I'm not asking you to tell me. I'm just telling you I don't know. Today at school, I had the strangest feeling. I was sitting in French class, and it was like there was a mile of distance between myself and my clothes. Does that make any sense?”

“Not in the slightest,” Kit replied.

“I didn't think it would,” Val said. “I wanted you to be there, so I could tell you how I felt. I'm sorry. I'm doing it again, aren't I, wanting you just for my sake.”

“Don't apologize,” Kit said. “I've made it a point of being there for you. And even if I hadn't, after the week you've been through, of course you'd want your friends around.”

“Not just any friends,” Val said. “You.”

“I know,” Kit said. “I wanted you home this weekend just so I could explain to someone how much I hated you. You were the only person I know who would have understood.”

Val looked around. “I hate these trees,” she said. “I think I've always hated them.”

“You do?” Kit said. “I always wanted them. I thought it must be great to have a house no one could look into.”

Val laughed. “Maybe we should swap places,” she said. “If I'm not Val Castaladi anymore, I could be Kit Farrell. And there's no reason why you can't be me.”

“I'm Irish,” Kit said. “Remember?”

“We'll dye your hair,” Val said. “And give you brown contact lenses. Think of all those cousins you could have.”

“I have Malcolm,” Kit said. “That's enough for right now. Did you like her? Your sister, I mean. The one you met.”

“I liked her a lot,” Val said. “I don't know how much we have in common, but she was honest with me, and that was a nice change of pace. People keep telling me just as much of the truth as they want, but she told me everything. I appreciated that. I seem to like honesty now, or at least I need it.” She smiled. “I even like it in you,” she said. “Or I think I will when I stop feeling sorry for myself.”

“You've never been self-pitying,” Kit said. “Not even that much when your mother was dying.”