Prospect Street (26 page)

“Bad idea?” she said.

“I'll call Mitch. I'll tell him he has to get you in this afternoon or I'll have to steal back my dress. Do you understand? You can't have it. You simply can't…” He was already dialing frantically.

Remy's eyes were wide. Faith imagined that confusion and continual reassessment on the part of his audience were part of Ralph's life drama.

Ralph began arguing with someone, then louder with the great Mitch himself. The phone call was abusive. Mitch's parentage was questioned, and finally Ralph hung up. “He had
a sudden cancellation. He'll see you both right away. Remy, you have to go and show your mother how to be brave. You'll start to take after her if you don't.”

Remy wrapped her hands around her throat the way Ralph had. He nodded sagely.

Faith was a little worried. If Mitch cut Ralph's hair, she was in trouble. “This Mitch, he's good? I don't want to look like a plucked chicken.”

“Buy the dress, cut the hair, bite the bullet.” He saluted. Then he went around the counter and started to ring up the dress.

Faith glanced at her daughter. Remy's eyes were shining. Faith realized that she didn't care what the afternoon was going to cost. For the moment, anyway, she had her daughter back.

They found their way to Mitch's salon, which was just down a side street. The interior was white on white. Only Mitch himself wasn't. He was as beefy as a football player with coal-black skin and one gold earring that dangled halfway to his shoulder. As two other stylists worked on customers behind him, he assessed Remy and Faith much as Ralph had.

“Highlights,” he said without preface. “Don't you know you need to go lighter? Highlights. Sweet Mother Mary, woman, why do you think you were born blond?” He came around the counter and lifted her hair unceremoniously in his hands. “Too much of this. Why so much? Little face, long hair. Bad idea.” He dropped her hair and turned to Remy. “Better.” He nodded. “Ready for something radical?”

“Me? Like what?”

He looked around the room, then strode across it to a display of pictures, poking a stubby index finger at one. “This.”

Remy joined him. The haircut was short. Very short and just feathered over the nape, forehead and tops of the model's ears. Her eyes looked twice as big in contrast, and her cheekbones looked sharp enough to slice bread.

“Here's what you ought to know,” he told Remy. “You'll always be pretty, which is nothing. Nothing! It's better to be striking. This will do it.”

Remy was frowning. Faith knew better than to intervene. “Won't I look like a boy?” Remy asked.

“Trust me, darling, that won't be a problem.”

Remy smiled. “Let's do it.”

Two hours later, Remy and Faith stared at each other. The difference was striking. Faith's hair was blonder, shorter and layered so it swirled around her chin when she moved. Her bangs were spiky and emphasized her eyes. She looked younger and sexier, and she felt like a million bucks.

Remy's transformation was even greater. The short cut emphasized every lovely feature. Unlike her mother, the new haircut made her look older, more the woman and less the child. She could easily pass for a college student. Faith wondered what she would need to do in the coming years to protect her daughter.

“Wow,” Faith said. “I've got to say, Mitch made a believer out of me. You look fantastic.”

Remy glanced in the mirror again. “You think so? Really?”

“It's a big change, but a good one.”

“You look good, too.” Remy didn't even sound grudging.

“You think Ralph will let me keep the dress now?”

Remy giggled. “He wanted to wear it himself.”

Faith laughed, too, sure Ralph would have joined them. She paid Mitch, adding a big tip she couldn't afford, and followed her daughter out into the sunlight. She felt lighter, younger and carefree. “Let's walk a little more before we head home.”

Remy scanned the sidewalk ahead of them before she nodded, almost as if she were looking for someone.

“Do your friends hang out here?” Faith asked.

“What friends?”

“Kids from school?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you and Billie come up here to window-shop?”

“Aren't I allowed?”

Faith backpedaled instantly. “I thought you might know if there's any other place we should look.”

At Wisconsin, Remy stopped about halfway to the corner. Faith had never paid much attention to the shops on this side of the street. When she walked to the library she usually walked on the other side. These shops were too trendy for her, geared to a younger clientele that might just include her daughter.

“Would you like to look around a little more before we go home?”

“Let's just go back.”

“Are you sure? I told you we'd look for some things for you, too.” Music blared from speakers perched above the open doorway of the next store. Faith peeked inside. Black walls, stainless steel fixtures. The clothes were like something out of a science fiction movie with a low budget.

An intense-looking young man with long black hair stood smoking a cigarette in the doorway. He caught sight of Remy and tossed it to the ground, grinding it under the heel of a snakeskin boot.

“Hey there.”

“Hey.” Remy darted a glance at her mother.

“Nice haircut.”

Remy self-consciously lifted her hand to her shorn head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smirked, then turned around and went back inside.

“Remy, who's that?” Faith said. “Do you know him?”

“I don't
know
him. He's just somebody who works there, that's all.”

“He seemed to recognize you.”

“So?” Remy turned around and started toward home.

“I just wondered.” Faith tried not to worry.

“Billie and I looked around in there a couple of times. I think she knows him.”

The man was considerably older than either Billie or Remy. Faith didn't like the idea of her daughter hanging around the shop after school, even if she was only making conversation. Despite allowances for different tastes, there was something about the young man that made Faith uncomfortable.

She was afraid it was the way he had looked at her daughter.

“Look, I know you don't want to hear this, but be careful. Okay? You might give this guy the wrong idea. He might not realize how young you are.”

“Like I'm stupid? Like I don't know the score?”

“Honey, you're fourteen. You need to take it easy. You need to be careful. That's all.”

“Are we home yet?”

Faith fell silent. She hated to spoil the good time they'd had together, but she couldn't think of a change of subject.

“I love you,” she said at last. “I hope you realize that's why I worry.”

Remy didn't bother to reply.

 

When Faith left for her date with Pete, Marley was happily ensconced in Faith's living room with Alex and a pile of board games. Remy, angry that Faith had asked Marley to “babysit,” had locked herself in her bedroom and turned on the kind of music that inspired Tipper Gore to lobby for warning labels.

When Faith returned from the embassy, Lydia was sitting in the living room watching television and Marley was gone.

Lydia got to her feet, waving away the obvious before Faith could ask. “I left another party early tonight and came over so Marley could go home.”

Faith, who was removing earrings and jewelry, paused, her watch hanging open at her wrist. “You're making a habit of leaving parties, Mother.” She hoped this time Joe wouldn't come looking for his wife.

“Such a waste of valuable time.” Lydia looked exhausted. She reminded Faith of a greyhound. Too thin, too fast, running in circles after a counterfeit, unattainable goal. The pace seemed to be catching up with her.

“Are you feeling all right?” Faith closed the distance between them.

Lydia snapped off the television. “I don't sleep well. I haven't in years. It takes its toll.”

“Have you spoken to your doctor?”

“What, so he can medicate me and make it harder to function by day? I'll take my chances with insomnia.”

“He might find some underlying cause.”

“I know the underlying cause. My life took a wrong turn before you were born. The reality of that keeps me awake at night.”

When a woman never talked about feelings, it was easy to assume she had none. Now Faith realized she had been wrong about that, as well as so many other things. “Do you mean Hope's kidnapping?”

Lydia seemed to think better of her lapse. “Some women have the capacity to find a new route when the old one's closed off. Is that what the date tonight was about? A new route for you?”

“With Pete Conley?” Faith finished removing her watch. It was a Piaget, not one of the more expensive models, but still an extravagant gift from David on her thirtieth birthday. Tonight was the first night that she'd worn it since encountering him at the cottage.

“Did the date go well?” Lydia probed.

“Pete's one of the good guys. The embassy is always stunning.” With its fabulous contemporary art and sculpture, the French embassy never failed to please. But tonight, even though there had been circus performers to delight them, Faith had still been bored for most of the evening.

“There are a number of women in the capital who would describe Pete in more glowing terms than ‘one of the good guys.'”

“And they would be right.”

“But not right for you?”

Lydia hadn't questioned her this closely when a much younger Faith had announced her engagement to David. “He's charming, sophisticated, intelligent, and we have as much chemistry as an underfunded public high school.”

“I can guarantee it's not because you don't look fabulous. I like what you've done with your hair. And the dress is spectacular on you.”

Faith dropped into the seat beside Lydia's, and after a second's hesitation, Lydia sat, too.

“Maybe I'm crazy to want more this time around,” Faith said, “but I do. I spent a lot of years with David assuming I was at fault for the lack of sparkle in our marriage. I don't want to go through that again, not for any reason. I'd rather stay single.”

“The chance lightning would strike twice in the same place is pretty poor, isn't it?”

“There are a lot of reasons for ho-hum sex besides a partner who's lying to himself.”

“Weren't we supposed to have this conversation a long time ago?”

Faith laughed. “I can't believe we're having it now.”

“I noticed you have a bottle of Scotch in the kitchen. Why don't you fix us both a drink?”

“If talking about sex doesn't kill me, that should finish me off.” Faith got up and went for the bottle. She returned with two glasses filled with ice and Dottie Lee's Glenfiddich. “So why
didn't
we have this conversation before? What were you keeping from me?”

“How disappointed you might be in the long run. How mundane it all is. Marriage. Sex. Love.” Lydia took a long sip from her glass.

“I'd been watching you and Dad all those years. I had your viewpoint figured out.” Faith was feeling brave. Lydia seemed to be feeling receptive. “Why did you stay with somebody you didn't love?”

“You're certain I don't love him?”

Faith considered. There were many kinds of love. Maybe she and David had shared one kind. But it hadn't been enough for him, and she had survived his sexual rejection by taking the blame on herself. Her image of herself as a woman had been worn away, one lonely night at a time.

“I'm certain you don't love him,” she said at last. “And I think you stayed with him because it's all you knew how to do.”

Lydia didn't deny it. “The lure of the familiar.”

Faith rested a hand on her mother's shoulder. “What if the papers hadn't gotten wind of David's affair? David felt so guilty that if I had begged him to stay with me, he might have done it. But would that have been enough?”

“It's not the same thing. Your father's sexual preference has never been in question.”

“But his passion and his dedication to you have.”

“Faith, Joe Huston's your father. Whatever else he is, he is that.”

Faith knew she couldn't push any harder. Besides, she wasn't sure what she was pushing for. Lydia and Joe had worked out their relationship long ago, probably before Faith herself was born. She had no right to interfere.

“I will tell you this,” Lydia continued. “Of the many reasons a woman should choose a man, passion is the key. I wish I'd told you that when you were about to marry David, because there's nothing more important. Respect matters. Passion without respect is nothing. But in the end, it's passion that keeps a relationship alive. And if you don't feel it with Pete Conley, there's no point trying.”

Faith thought of the one man in her life who did inspire passion. Pavel Quinn, as different from David or Pete as an intelligent, red-blooded American male could be. This evening had taught her that her attraction to Pavel was more than sexual starvation. Because Pete had made it clear she could have any and all needs met tonight, and she hadn't felt a flicker of interest.

“I was a hit,” Faith said. “That was part of the reason I went. I needed to see if people would be kind or cut me dead.”

“You weren't giving your friends much credit. Most people have been waiting diplomatically for you to finish licking your wounds.”

“I'm back to having a life.” Faith smiled. “It feels odd.”

“And good.” It wasn't a question.

“And good.”

“Just don't sell yourself short. Find the life you deserve. Find the man you deserve.”

“Or do without.”

Lydia swallowed the rest of her drink, then set her glass on the side table and stood. “An alternative my generation equated with failure. We were wrong.”