Prospect Street (28 page)

“Well. Wow.” She leaned over and traced it, much as Remy had traced Candace's name on the windowsill.

“What's it doing way down here?” Alex rubbed the sole of his shoe back and forth over one of the stones. “It's like the floor of something.”

“A greenhouse,” Dottie Lee said. She joined them.

Faith touched the signature again. “This is where Violet
must have raised plants to sell before the war. I should have realized she'd need a greenhouse for that.”

“James built it for her. He was too sick to do it all at once, of course. He did a little at a time. A stone here, a piece of the frame there. Then he'd have to rest for days. They used windows they found in the rubbish and set them back-to-back to trap layers of air for insulation.”

“Recyclers. Like the Can Man,” Alex said proudly.

“Quite the same, yes. James was good with his hands. He carved the trim himself. Garlands of ivy, I think. It was a thing of beauty once it was complete. No electric heat, of course, but a little coal stove in the corner to use on the coldest nights. Violet would come out and bank it before bedtime. She bragged that she never lost a plant to the weather.”

Faith felt another surge of family pride. “She was so imaginative.”

“She used every asset she had available. I patterned myself after her.”

Faith was afraid to follow that particular train of thought. “We've found three signatures now. Millicent, Violet and Candace. That's it.”

“Why is Millicent's name in the attic?” Alex asked.

Dottie Lee patted his shoulder. “Millicent was quite the thespian. She wanted to be an actress. She spent huge stretches of her childhood in that attic putting on plays with the other children in the neighborhood. It was her creative home.”

“You, too?”

“No, dear. I was a charming little girl, and they recognized my real talent. They sent me door-to-door to sell tickets. I sold a great many.”

Faith couldn't help but smile. “Pavel, Dottie Lee's going to help me reconstruct Violet's garden.”

Pavel was examining the stones. “I could rebuild the greenhouse on this spot. Maybe there's a photograph somewhere of the old one.”

“Thanks, but I don't want to raise plants for a living.”

“Then a summer house. An open air gazebo, where we could sit in the evenings and look out over the lights.”

She wondered if the others noticed how he had incorporated himself into her future. “I couldn't ask you to do that.”

“You didn't.”

“Violet would approve. She spent so much time out here.” Dottie Lee turned and swept the air with her hand, to encompass the yard. “Are you ready to sketch, Faith?”

Faith held up the tablet.

“Then let's get to it, before I expire. At the back of the house were camellias. Three, I believe. No sign of them now. A lovely carmine pink. A white. A lighter, shell-pink.”

Dottie Lee closed her eyes as if envisioning the past. As she spoke, trees emerged, a blue spruce, dogwoods and redbuds. Azalea and wisteria followed on their heels, along with a list of perennials that changed with the seasons. Trillium bloomed in the shade of a long-dead sweetbay magnolia, and white clematis the size of saucers climbed a trellis that had decayed to dust decades before. Old-fashioned hollyhocks and sunflowers shaded the greenhouse windows in the hottest days of summer.

Dottie Lee faced Faith. “But the most remarkable thing she grew, of course, were the poppies. Surely Lydia told you about the summer of the poppies?”

“Poppies are those red flowers, right?” Alex asked.

“They can be any color, but these were indeed red,” Dottie Lee said. “Bright red. In the summer of 1941 half of Washington came to see them.”

“The garden tour.” Faith hadn't thought to ask Dottie Lee about the tour. Lydia had been too young to remember details, but Dottie Lee was older.

“Violet's garden had Georgetown talking. That's why she won a spot, because everybody wanted to see it.”

“What was so special about poppies?” Alex asked.

“That summer, 1941, a great deal of the world was already fighting World War II, but the United States hadn't gotten in
volved. Violet planted red poppies to remind her neighbors that war is very serious. Hundreds of them in every available inch of garden soil. You have never seen such a sight. It was breathtaking, like bright red smoke covering the ground. The flowers even grew between the paving stones on the walk leading down to the greenhouse.”

Alex had been listening closely. “Pearl Harbor was in December of '41, right? We studied it last year. But what do poppies have to do with anything?”

It was the second time that the right poem had occurred to Faith. “There's a famous poem about World War I. It starts off ‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.' Now red poppies are a reminder of the men who died fighting.”

Dottie Lee finished the explanation. “Because of James, Violet knew that war is always sad for someone. When the U.S. finally joined the fighting, she was every bit as patriotic as anyone else on the street. But she had no illusions that what was happening was glamorous. She knew better.”

Since moving into the house on Prospect, Faith had given up one life, but almost without her permission, she was being woven into another. Her ancestors were supporting her in her time of crisis. Even their decision to hold on to this house had changed her life, for without it she wouldn't have grown and changed herself. The women who had lived and loved here had made everything possible for her.

She felt Pavel's hands on her shoulders, and she leaned against him. Her gaze flicked to Dottie Lee's face. Dottie Lee was looking at her; and at Pavel's proprietary grasp.

“I know more about this house and the things that happened here than anyone in the world,” Dottie Lee said. “Don't forget that, Faith. When you need answers, I have them.” Her aged eyes lifted to Pavel's. “But only when you're ready to hear them.”

F
aith half expected Remy to disappear after school the next afternoon, but she was waiting at the appointed spot when Faith came to pick her up. For the most part Remy was silent, spitting out monosyllables in answer to Faith's questions about her day, but Faith simply counted her blessings.

Alex had gone home with a friend and wouldn't be back until nearly dinnertime, so without other obligations, Faith began stripping the wallpaper in her bedroom. An hour later she was surprised to find Remy standing in her doorway, watching her.

“That stuff is sick. Who would want to look at it?”

Faith, up high on her stepladder, was down to wide strips in the center of the wall, but above it, in the area she'd learned to call a “frieze,” she had discovered a stylized landscape of a cypress swamp at sunset.

“Sick? I love it. I wish I could salvage the whole scene. I've been trying to find a way, but there were so many layers on top of it, it's taken a beating.”

“Who wants a mural at the top of a wall?”

“It must have been stylish at the turn of the last century. I've
been thinking about dark green in the middle, with a landscape up here and a simple border along the edge of the ceiling. I've found a source online for reproductions.”

Remy was silent for so long that Faith thought she'd gone back to her room, but a glance proved otherwise.

“You really like the history here, don't you?” Remy said.

“When I was a little girl I fixed up my closet like a time machine. I'd crawl inside and imagine I was in Queen Elizabeth's court or battling Attila the Hun.”

“You? A soldier?”

“It's easy to pretend you're anything.”

“I pretend I'm old enough to leave home for good.”

“I'll bet you do.” Faith began to scrape carefully under the paper and was rewarded when several inches peeled away.

“The wallpaper in my room is awful.”

“I know.” Faith continued to lift and peel. It was a job for someone with infinite patience and time, both of which were in short supply these days.

“The room's not too bad, though. The lights are pretty at night.”

Faith was amazed she didn't fall off the ladder. She kept her voice neutral. “They are. You have the best view.”

“The kittens are almost old enough to give away now.”

“I've been wanting to talk to you about that.” Faith had finally managed to get Guest and her babies to the vet. They were in good health, and the requisite vaccinations had begun. Guest was still aloof, but the kittens, thanks to Alex and Remy, were well socialized.

“Guest is used to this house. I know how she feels, you know? It's a strange situation, us being here, but she's adjusted. If we try to give her away, it'll just be too much for her.”

“Do you think she'll ever be a good pet?”

“She's kind of used to me. She jumped up on my lap yesterday.”

Faith wanted to abandon the ladder, find the cat and give her a big smooch. “If you want to keep Guest, we will. But she has to be spayed. No more kittens.”

“I'd like to keep Pinto Bean, too.”

Pinto Bean was the tortoiseshell. Not surprisingly, all the kittens had names now. “Two cats?”

“I'll take care of them.” Remy didn't say please, but her tone implied it.

Faith knew her daughter had only summoned up good manners so she could plead the kitten's fate, but it was a revelation that Remy could still be polite, so Faith was willing to make allowances.

“Okay?” Remy said.

“I'll tell you what. I'll bribe you. You let me help you fix up your room, and I'll let you keep Pinto Bean.”

“What are you going to do?”

Faith backed down the ladder. “For starters, we could see how many layers of wallpaper we have to remove. Once it's gone, you can paint, or find some pretty paper and put it up.”

“You think I'd do a good job?” Remy sounded uncertain.

“Remy, I have complete faith in you. I think you can do anything if you try hard enough. That's why this school problem has me so worried.”

“I don't want to talk about that.”

“Let's talk about wallpaper.”

Ten minutes later they were sitting side by side on Remy's floor, putty knives and sponges in hand, lifting strips of wallpaper from one corner.

“This room wasn't used as frequently before your grandmother rented out the house, so I'll bet there are fewer layers here than in my room,” Faith said.

“Who picked out this stuff?” Remy was scraping away the top layer. This room was gratifyingly easy. Faith suspected her mother had found the cheapest paper hanger in D.C.

“Someone who was trying to save money. Your grandmother.”

“You know what I think? I think she was trying to cover up Hope's wallpaper. So she wouldn't have to look at it and remember. You know?”

Obviously Remy was thinking more about family dynamics than she let on. “I bet you're right, but not this layer. I bet there'll be a couple of layers before we get down to Hope's nursery. That was so long ago.”

“The way everybody talks around it, it seems like it wasn't that long ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, usually people avoid fresh things, you know, things that hurt them recently. But nobody in our family talks about the kidnapping, even now.”

“The moment a baby's born, she feels like a person you've known and loved all your life. So even if my mother just had Hope for a few days, it was like having an arm or a leg ripped away.”

“Is that how you'd feel?”

“I don't know if I could have lived through it.” Faith weighed her next sentence, but decided to go ahead. “Mother lost a piece of her heart, and she's guarded the rest of it ever since.”

“You mean that's why she's so…I don't know…”

“Distant?”

“Mean.”

Faith had to smile. “Well, of course I didn't know her before.”

Remy giggled. “Maybe she was always mean.”

“She just pushes people away. And not so much since we've moved here. Have you noticed?”

“Maybe you think so because you don't have anyone else to talk to now that Daddy's gone.”

Faith took heart that Remy had mentioned David. The whole conversation seemed charged with miracles. “Maybe I'm just more approachable.”

“You're mad at
me
all the time.”

“With no reason?”

Remy didn't answer.

They scraped in silence, getting enough of the top layer off to start in on the next. That one was ugly, too. A Peter Max
wanna-be had designed it. At least the pop art hearts and flowers made a stab at whimsy.

“This looks like late sixties, maybe early seventies. Something straight off a Beatles album.”

“Hope was born when?”

“1962. So if I'm right, we'll find at most one more under it before we get to her nursery paper.”

“What did Grandmother put in
your
nursery?”

“Armed guards.” Faith took another stab at the paper. “Actually, I have seen pictures. It was teddy bears of all shapes and sizes. And after I was born, people all over Virginia sent teddy bears, too. Dolls and teddy bears.”

“Because of Hope?”

“Your grandparents packed them all off to children's hospitals, but I saw a newspaper article about it recently. I never knew.”

“I guess all those people were glad you were okay.”

“People need happy endings.”

“I used to think that was the only kind there was.”

Faith was touched. “You need to stay around for the next installment of this story. Sometimes the bumpiest roads save the best scenery for the end.”

“That's really dumb, even for you.”

Faith burst into laughter. “You keep me honest. I'll give you that, kiddo.”

They scraped and lifted, nudging each other as they changed position, at one point leaning back-to-back companionably. The third layer was navy-blue with tiny white fleur-de-lis in symmetrical rows. Plain and serviceable, it was more fitting for a study than a bedroom.

“I bet this is the last layer before we find Hope's wallpaper,” Faith said. “It's dark enough that it would easily cover any trace.”

“It's so dark, this room must have felt like a morgue.”

Faith thought it must have felt like a morgue anyway to the two people who'd had their child stolen from inside these walls.

They kept scraping and lifting, sponging with the big sponge and solution Faith had brought from the other room. The next layer wasn't what they'd expected. It was an elegant emerald and gold stripe, formal for a bedroom, but in keeping with the traditional lines of the house.

“Where are the ducks and clowns?” Remy set down her putty knife.

“This
is
very odd.” Faith rested, too. The hearts and flowers had obviously been from the late sixties or early seventies. Since that point, she and Remy had gone down two more layers. That seemed like a lot of wallpaper for a ten-year span. “My best guess is that someone moved in, hated the paper and put up more.”

“College students?”

Silently Faith conceded the point. “One more layer, then we'll quit. My curiosity's stirring.”

Two layers later, they admitted the obvious. Quite clearly Hope Huston's loving parents had brought their daughter home to a room of formal emerald-green or studious midnight-blue. No ducks. No clowns. No grinning teddy bears.

“Did you decorate my nursery?” Remy asked.

“Fairies and butterflies. I spent weeks picking out the paper.”

“I had baby wallpaper. You had baby wallpaper. Why didn't Hope?”

It was a mystery. Faith was left to wonder if her mother had experienced so little maternal feeling Lydia hadn't cared enough to fix up the room.

“What would you say if I painted this room black?”

“I would say no.”

“It's my room, isn't it?”

“A room, not a cave.”

“What if I find wallpaper I like? Dark wallpaper. You're doing dark green.”

“That would be fine. But I get to see it first, just in case.”

“What do you think I'm going to do? Buy something with gang graffiti scrawled all over it?”

“Is there such a thing?”

Remy giggled. Faith put her arm around her daughter's shoulders for a quick hug.

 

Remy picked at the wallpaper after her mother went downstairs to make dinner. Now that they had a kitchen, Faith was trying to pretend things were just the same as they'd been in McLean. As if Remy couldn't see straight through all her efforts. Cinnamon rolls and chicken and dumplings didn't make a family. Neither did new kitchen counters or fresh wallpaper. Faith was just playing house, the way Remy had as a little girl.

The telephone rang, but she didn't bother to answer it. It was never for her anymore. Megan had stopped calling because Remy had nothing to talk about. She didn't want to tell Megan anything about the guys down the street. If she did, Megan might tell her mother, and her mother might feel she needed to tell Faith. If that happened, Remy figured she would never be allowed to leave the house again.

She didn't know why she'd agreed to strip her wallpaper or why, for a little while at least, she had believed her mother was anything more than a warden. She didn't really live here and never would. She didn't know why she'd said that stupid thing about the lights being pretty. They only reminded her that there was another world outside this house, a world she would join just as soon as she was old enough.

In the meantime, she had lived for the few hours each week when she could escape this Georgetown jailhouse and see Enzio. Now that she was in solitary confinement, even that diversion was going to be denied her.

Faith knocked on her door again, and Remy called a lethargic “Come in.”

“That was Alex. He and Sammy wrote a play, and they're putting it on for Sammy's mother and me before he comes home. Do you want to come and see it?”

That was too dumb for an answer. Remy rolled her eyes.

“Can I trust you here by yourself, then?” Faith asked. “I'll probably be gone for a while.”

“Like what am I going to do? Play with matches? Drink drain cleaner?”

“Don't go anywhere. I'm not sure when I'll be back,” Faith said at last. “But I'll expect to find you right here.”

“Seig heil!”
Remy gave a mock salute.

Faith shook her head and closed the door behind her.

Remy waited until she heard the front door close. Then she ran to Faith's bedroom window and watched her mother disappear down the street. Back in her own room, Remy slipped on her shoes and combed her hair. Not that there was much of it left to comb. The new cut made her feel older and more sophisticated, like a different person. One fully capable of doing whatever she wanted.

Outside, she locked the front door and started toward Enzio's house. She knew this was his afternoon off.

Enzio still didn't know how old she was, but she'd told him and the other guys at the house that her mother was psycho and didn't want Remy to do anything except work and study. She'd had to tell them something just to make sure they didn't stop by the house and ask for her.

And wouldn't Faith love that? She'd already noticed Enzio the day of their shopping trip. What would she think if she knew how much time Remy spent with him? Faith would lock her in the attic until she was a withered old lady. Remy would be reduced to carving her name on rafters, too.

The door was ajar when she arrived. She nudged it open and called inside before she walked in. Selim was in the living room, fastening Bear's leash to a studded collar. He got to his feet and started in her direction.

“Going for a walk?” Remy stooped to ruffle the fur around Bear's oversized neck.