Prospect Street (18 page)

The electrician had said the wall wasn't load bearing, and that if she went with Pavel's most extensive plan, the wall could be removed without problem. She was too angry to question what had been a casual remark. She stood back and kicked it with all her might, using the heel of her ankle boot as the driving point.

The kick jolted through her and she nearly fell, but she righted herself and did it again. A hole opened, jagged, small and ugly, but to her, it looked like a tunnel toward freedom. She never lost her temper this way. Adrenaline and something like elation surged through her.

“I—am—nobody's—good—little—girl!” She slammed her foot against the side of the hole, opening it farther.

She tried to remember when she had given up on Joe, when she had realized he would never be the kind of father she needed. She had been young, too young for that kind of revelation, so she had taken the blame. She had been certain there was something wrong with
her.
She wasn't good enough, pretty
enough, smart enough. If she had been any of those things, Joe would have been a better father.

Only later, when she was old enough to rationalize the behavior of others, had she begun to let herself off the hook. She'd told herself that Hope's kidnapping had been too traumatic to bear. The tragedy of losing his first daughter had closed Joe off to the rest of the world. He had been afraid to love his second.

She kicked the wall again, and it crumbled under the force of her heel. No,
age
hadn't helped her reevaluate her relationship with Joe. Who was she trying to fool? David was responsible. She'd watched her husband with their children, and for the first time she'd seen a good father up close. David adored his kids. He took parenting seriously, and he liked nothing better than listening to Remy's and Alex's problems. Not because they were particularly exceptional—although they were—but simply because he was their dad.

After several years of marriage she had realized that none of the fault in her relationship with Joe was hers. Joe's role as a parent was to love her and accept her as she was. For a man who prided himself on getting a job done, he had fallen down miserably on that one.

She kicked the wall again, with less force, but she hadn't gauged this new spot well, and her heel slipped too far into the ragged opening, catching and capturing her foot.

She bounced, trying to free herself, but in the end, she went down anyway.

From her vantage point on the floor she stared at the mess she had made. Her leg throbbed; her hands tingled. She felt cleansed, as if she had kicked something out of her life—at least temporarily.

“Have a cow, Mom. Jeez!”

Faith turned to see Remy standing in the doorway. For once she hadn't thought about the children. She hadn't even considered that they would wonder what had possessed her to kick a hole in the kitchen wall.

“I imagine this looks strange.” Faith twisted her foot, trying to free it.

“Yeah, well.”

“We're going to take out this wall. I guess I got ahead of myself.”

“Chill, would you? If I started kicking in walls you'd ground me for life.”

“I seem to be stuck.” Faith twisted her foot the other way.

Remy crossed the kitchen and grabbed her mother's ankle, giving one sharp tug. Faith was free again. She scooted away from the wall, but Remy stayed put.

“The wall's really gotta come down?”

Faith was testing the heel of her boot, which seemed to have a new wiggle. “Uh-huh.”

“Good!” Remy slammed the heel of her sneaker against the wall beside the hole. “Hey, look at that.”

The wall had crumbled a little more. Remy kicked again and the hole got larger as her effort merged with Faith's.

Faith wondered exactly which part of Remy's life the wall represented. Whatever it was, she seemed to find as much satisfaction in destroying it as Faith had.

“Be careful, or you'll get stuck, too.” Faith joined her daughter at the hole, and between them they made a sizeable increase in it, taking turns wordlessly until they were both panting with exertion.

Faith dropped to the floor—gracefully, this time—as Remy stepped back. She felt the way she used to when she and Remy made cookies or sewed doll clothes together. Mother-daughter bonding.

“Awesome,” Remy said. “Now the kitchen looks even worse. Like that's possible.”

Faith knew she should apologize and point out that there were better, more mature ways to handle anger. But she didn't feel one bit sorry for kicking in the wall. For once she had done something simply because it felt good.

Instead of apologizing, she scooted closer to the hole and
peered inside. She couldn't see much, but Pavel had been right. By removing this wall and the one leading into the utility room, they would open up enough space to substantially expand the kitchen.

“By the look of it, this has been closed off for years.”

“Where did it go?” Remy asked.

“I think there must have been a sleeping porch or maybe just a platform of some kind outside your windows. This was probably built as a fire escape, although not a very effective one. Or maybe backstairs for the servants. When this house was built even people without a lot of money had domestic help.”

“Is that how Hope was kidnapped? Somebody took these stairs up to the platform and opened my windows? You said nobody could get in them.”

“I'm sure this was closed off well before Hope was born.” Faith scooted closer. Something lay just in reach. A piece of paper, yellowed with age. She stuck her hand through the hole and felt around, just contacting it with her fingertips. Gently she scooted the paper closer until she could almost lift it through the hole.

“What's that?”

“A genuine antique piece of trash.” Faith grasped the paper between her fingertips and sat back, bringing it through the hole with her. The paper wasn't old enough to crumble, but as she unfolded it, it tore along one crease. She smoothed it carefully.

“What is it?”

“A note.” Handwritten with what looked to be a fountain pen on lined school paper. The script was faded but legible. The letters were well formed, as if the writer had learned penmanship during a time when it was faithfully taught in school.

“What does it say?” Remy lowered herself to the floor beside her mother. Faith could smell her daughter's citrus shampoo and feel the soft cotton of Remy's T-shirt brush against her forearm.

She dragged out the moment. Not too many months ago she'd had a daughter, not a teenager, and she deeply missed the
child who had shared every thought and valued her mother's opinion. She believed she and Remy would be friends again someday, but for now she would settle for the illusion.

“It's hard to make out,” Faith said. She lifted it higher. “Dear Mrs. Huston…”

“Grandmother? Maybe it's a ransom note.”

“I doubt it's anything that exciting.” Remy's head was next to Faith's now, and Faith had the unforgivable desire to hug her. But Remy and Guest had too much in common. Grab either of them and the claws were immediately unsheathed.

“Let me see it.” Remy paused. “Okay?”

“Be careful or it will tear even more.” Faith handed the letter to her daughter. “Read it out loud.”

Remy puzzled over the faded script, reading slowly. “There is much to do, and I only made a small beginning. Just as you ask, I begin in the kitchen and removed the wallpaper.” Remy looked up. “Whoever wrote this doesn't spell very well. There aren't enough
n
's in
beginning.
And the grammar's funny.”

“What else does it say?”

Remy finished reading. “When I come again I will prepare the walls for painting. Sincerely, Dominik Du…Du?” She looked up. “The rest of it's smudged.”

Faith had been following over Remy's shoulder. Now she sat back. “Dubrov. Dominik Dubrov.”

“How do you know? You can't make it out any better than I can.”

Faith's mind was whirling. “Because before I was born a man named Dominik Dubrov worked on a number of houses in this neighborhood.”

“That was what, like a hundred years ago? How do you know that?”

Faith put a hand on Remy's knee. “Because Dominik Dubrov was the prime suspect in Hope's kidnapping. Even today, most people who know anything about the case think he was the one who took my sister.”

S
ummer turned into fall without asking for permission. Faith thought the change of seasons might be the only thing she hadn't been forced to organize and execute. Even though the family was more or less settled, she was still working so hard she was bleary-eyed with exhaustion. There were moments, though, when she looked at what she had accomplished and felt a surge of pride.

She had agonized over the expense, but in the end she'd opted to go with Pavel's most extensive redesign. She hired a contractor to add French doors to the back of the house, even though they would lead to empty space until she could afford a deck. For the price of a crowbar and sledgehammer—plus a new heel on her boot—she and the children took out the necessary dividing walls. The tools were cheaper than a psychiatrist.

The idea to use the Can Man to help clear the back garden was Dottie Lee's. She told Faith she used Alec as a gardener herself, and that he worked at a reasonable rate. When Faith hesitated, Dottie Lee reassured her that he never drank on the job. According to Dottie Lee, he didn't even curse.

Qualms satisfied, Faith hired the Can Man on the next trash day. Alex, who always needed money for more computer equipment, volunteered to help when he learned he could earn minimum wage in his own backyard. He liked working with the Can Man, and the results were encouraging.

The electrician rewired; the plumber ran lines for a new sink and dishwasher, and the contractor removed all the old cabinets and helped her order new ones. She chose inexpensive oak from the home improvement center, planning to refinish them herself, and basic laminate counters in a deep red—to please her son.

While everyone else labored, Faith removed all the downstairs wallpaper, fighting the good fight with a sprayer, putty knives, industrial-size sponges and 80-grit sandpaper. She primed the walls, spackling the smaller holes so the plasterer could concentrate on the bigger jobs. When he finished, she primed the ceilings, too, then went to look for paint.

That was when she had realized how little she knew about the house.

For five generations the house had been a womb, nurturing and sheltering a matrilineal succession of her ancestors, who had watched Georgetown grow from a quiet tobacco port into a pricey neighborhood at the edge of a bustling metropolis. Hope's kidnapping had separated Faith from that heritage, but now, in the wake of her own personal drama, the artery to that past had been reconnected.

She knew far too little about the women who had come before her to blithely renovate their house. She knew too little about their hopes and dreams, their habits, their desires. For that matter, she knew too little about the history they had lived through, and the styles and tastes that had developed as a result.

She knew too little about almost everything. And so did Lydia.

Lydia, who had always scheduled her visits to Faith the way she scheduled appointments with her hairdresser, had taken to dropping by the Prospect Street house every time she was in the city. If Faith was involved in a project, more often than not Lydia rolled up her sleeves to help. Faith was wary of this new
mother, the one who bit back criticism and took a genuine interest in the renovations. But she was seduced by the intimacy, too.

This afternoon Lydia had dropped by again, though the two women weren't working. They had boiled water in an electric kettle for tea, and they were sitting in the back garden, gazing out over the space that Alec the Can Man and Alex—under Faith's supervision—had slowly reclaimed.

Faith hoped that bringing Lydia outside might jog her memory, but so far the effort had been unsuccessful. “Doesn't sitting out here remind you of anything about your childhood?”

“I really can't tell you much more about the history of the house than I have already.” Lydia was repeating a familiar refrain.

“Mother, you must know more than you've let on. The day we showed you the kittens, you were going to tell us about
your
mother, but you got sidetracked.”

“I really don't remember much. When I left the house, I shut away everything connected to it. I'm ashamed.”

Faith had never heard her mother admit to any such emotion. It was cause for alarm. “We all forget more than we remember.”

“Not all of us forget on purpose.”

“You had good reason not to think about anything connected to Prospect Street.”

“I blamed a house for something that happened inside its walls. Doesn't that strike you as the ultimate shifting of responsibility?”

Faith was feeling her way along unfamiliar paths. “You seem to be more at peace with it now.”

“I like what you're doing here. You're sweeping out the cobwebs in the house the way you're sweeping them out of your life.”

“David was more than a cobweb.”

“You still miss him?”

Faith was so surprised that she had to scurry in a different
direction. “I…At times. I miss talking to him at the end of the day. That's when we were at our best together.”

“I gather he hasn't found a job?”

“No.” Or reconnected with his daughter.

“David's a good man.”

Faith wondered how many more revelations the next few minutes could sustain. “Where did that come from?”

“I do occasionally think for myself. As angry as I am, I can still see a certain nobility in his decision to admit who he was.”

“Well, he got caught. He didn't really admit it, did he?” Faith made a face. “But he would have, I guess. The big revelation was coming. Lying was eating him up.”

The door behind them slammed, and Alex ran out to the table where they were sitting. “Remy's on her way.”

“You're supposed to walk together,” Faith reminded him.

“She walks too slow. She's somewhere down the street.”

With September's arrival Remy and Alex had begun attending middle school at Georgetown's western edge—Alex with a certain degree of optimism, Remy because she had no choice.

The school, as underfunded as so many of its urban counterparts, was a far cry from the academy in which they'd spent the bulk of their educational years. But there were definite compensations. The student body was integrated and multi-cultural, a more accurate slice of life than they'd encountered in the past. Alex, once considered the scourge of the classroom, was finding teachers who knew how to deal kindly with him. Remy was absorbing a different view of the world.

“Shouldn't you check on her?” Lydia asked Faith.

“She'll be fine. She's never in a hurry to get home…or to leave in the morning, for that matter.”

“She failed a science quiz.” Alex was incapable of keeping anything to himself.

Faith filed that away. If it was true, it was a first. “I was telling your grandmother how much you've done back here.”

“Me and the Can Man.”

Lydia looked disapproving but didn't say anything. She had already lectured Faith about letting a homeless man work side by side with her grandson.

“He hasn't been back this week,” Alex said.

Faith was afraid that Alec was off on a drinking binge and hoped it wasn't something worse like illness or injury…or incarceration.

“He'll be back,” she assured him.

Alex glanced at his grandmother, but his expression said it all. The afternoon was going to be a bust if he stayed out here.

“Your mother was just asking me if I remember anything about the history of the house,” Lydia said. “Are you interested, Alex?”

Alex looked as if he knew his future happiness—immediate, anyway—depended on his answer.

Lydia didn't wait. “There's a secret back here which you apparently haven't discovered. I could tell you what to look for, but only if I hear a little enthusiasm.”

“Awesome!”

“Much better. But we'll wait for your sister.”

His face fell. “She might take a while. She's walking with somebody.”

“Somebody from school?” Faith thought this could be a good sign.

“Some girl in her science class.”

Faith hoped it was somebody her daughter could study with. “There's lemonade in the ice chest. Get yourself a bottle, and one for Remy, too.”

Alex disappeared back inside.

“When do the new appliances come?” Lydia said. “Aren't you tearing your hair out with no refrigerator?”

With the new kitchen constellation Faith had been able to change her special-order refrigerator for a larger model. She had a stove on order, too, and a dishwasher. All dependable, low-end appliances that would serve them well.

“They come next week, and now that the wiring's safe, we
can plug them in and use them even without the cabinets and counters, although we probably won't.”

“You must be tired of eating out and heating soup on a hot plate.”

“I love it. I'm a new woman, Mother. I'll be thrilled to have a kitchen, but I'm never going to see cooking and attending committee meetings as my life again.”

“You seemed happy at the time.”

“Maybe I was. I don't know anymore. But even if I had reliable alimony and child support, I would still want something different in my life now.”

“Like another man?”

Mysteriously, a picture of Pavel Quinn leapt to mind. Pavel had come by several times in the past weeks to monitor her progress. Once they had shared a pizza over kitchen plans, and another time he'd spent an hour with Alex making modifications to his computer. Whatever the two had done had been too technical for Faith to understand, but Alex had been thrilled.

“My divorce won't be final until December,” Faith said. “Isn't that question a little premature?”

“The marriage is well and truly over. A piece of paper won't change that.”

“You're surprising me today.”

“Life is much too short to wait for the courts to end something that's already finished.”

Alex arrived with the lemonade. “Remy called. She went to Billie's house. Is that okay?”

“Did you get a number?”

“She said she'd be home in an hour.”

Faith didn't scold Alex. She would have to talk to both of them again about checking in. She didn't want them to feel they were in prison, but the crime rate in the city was high enough for caution.

“Does this mean you're not going to tell me what to look for out here?” Alex asked his grandmother.

“I'll tell you part of it. It's another name.”

Alex looked disappointed.

“Like the one in the attic?” Faith was intrigued.

“Exactly like that.” Lydia smiled slyly. “Only different.”

“Whose?”

“I think Alex should find out for himself. Or maybe you'll discover it when you start to bring order to this chaos.”

Alex wandered off to check around the bases of the nearby trees.

“What do you remember about the garden, Mother? I'd like to restore as much of it as I can. At least some of the basics.”

“Truthfully? Very little.” Lydia considered. “But…you know, I haven't thought of this in years.”

“What?”

“I think my grandmother won a prize in a local garden contest. There was a tour, a garden tour of Georgetown.” Lydia seemed to be panning for nuggets from a forgotten past. “She was so thrilled. I do remember that. Her garden won an award.”

“I wonder if I could track it down? Check out newspaper accounts? Can you remember when this happened? Maybe there's a description of the garden somewhere.”

Lydia leaned forward, eyes shining. “There might well be. I was young, too young to know whether it made the papers, I guess. But old enough to remember how excited she was.”

“Make a guess about your age. Five? Ten?”

“Maybe seven? That would put the tour somewhere around the spring or early summer of 1941. Just before we entered the war. I doubt there was much time for garden tours once we started sending men overseas.”

Faith moved beyond her great-grandmother's garden to the rest of the house. “I wonder what else I could find out? This
is
the capital. History is what we're about. We could fill in all those holes in your memory.”

“You're interested enough?”

Not only was she interested, Faith realized, but this was something she could do for Lydia to thank her for turning over
the keys. Lydia, so self-sufficient and aloof, would never look into this herself. This was a gift Faith could give her.

Alex returned. “If this was Violet's garden, then it must be Violet's name we're looking for. Right?”

Lydia smiled at him, and Faith thought it was the first time her mother had resembled a doting grandmother. “Aren't you smart?” Lydia said. “You do have a way of figuring things out, Alex.”

Alex grinned back at her.

It wasn't exactly chocolate chip cookies, homemade baby quilts and trips to Disney World. But Faith thought Alex and her mother might be on to something at last.

 

She told Pavel about the garden tour that night when he dropped by with takeout again. This time the bag was filled with pad Thai, lemongrass soup and spring rolls.

He kissed her on the cheek in welcome, like an old, dear friend. Like Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond, who had known her since childhood. Like the organizer of a campaign fundraiser.

She felt a little hurt until she realized where her thoughts were leading. Then she simply felt embarrassed.

“This is my way of checking the kitchen's progress.” Pavel wore a sky-blue sweater, and he stripped it over his head as he spoke, revealing one more in a collection of paint-spattered, misshapen T-shirts.

Faith had never told Pavel what she'd learned about him from Dottie Lee. She assumed it would come out on its own, but so far he had been silent. Now she shook her head. “Look at you, Pavel. I'm on to you, you know. Dottie Lee told me all about you, so you don't have to dress like a roadie anymore.”