Prospect Street (4 page)

“Yeah. Grandpa Bronson would have knocked him silly for the Lord.”

David's father, a renowned evangelist, would have done exactly that. Arnold Bronson was dead now, which was just as well, because David's announcement would surely have killed him.

“How do you know what your grandfather would have done?” Faith got to her feet, squeezing Alex's hand before she dropped it.

“I can draw conclusions, you know. I'm not stupid, even if everybody thinks so.”

“I don't think you're stupid. You know I don't. You're very smart. You just like to think outside the box. You're going to do big important things with your life.”

“I want to see the house. I'll stay away from Grandmother.”

“Good thinking.”

“If I was really smart, I'd think of a way to make Dad come back.”

Her throat tightened. “You didn't do anything to drive him away, and you can't do anything to bring him home.”

“I don't want to see him.” He folded his arms. “He probably doesn't want to see us, anyway. He probably doesn't care.”

“He wants to see you. When you're ready, he'll be there waiting.”

“Remy wishes he was dead.”

Faith was surprised Remy was talking about her feelings with Alex. “She's angry. Things will get better.”

“Not for her they won't.”

Faith had been worried enough about her children. Now the worry grew deeper. “Time takes care of—”

“It hasn't helped Grandmother, has it? She's still angry about Hope. And we're going to be living with her and with Grandfather. He's angry, too. Everybody's angry, and living with them is just going to make things worse! Why did you have to sell our house?”

The lump in Faith's throat grew larger. “Daddy's not working right now, and I don't have the experience to get a job with a salary large enough to pay the mortgage. We're only going to live with your grandparents until we can get back on our feet. It won't be forever.”

Even as she said it, Faith wondered. She had looked at three-bedroom apartments, and the rents were astounding. Unless David was able to find a good job—unlikely, since he had closed one set of doors with his conservative rhetoric and the other with his recent announcement—they might be living with her parents until the children went to college.

“Everything I do is wrong.” Alex looked uncharacteristically glum. “Whenever anyone's angry or sad, they take it out on me.”

Faith had a glimpse of the future her son envisioned. Months
of criticism stretching into years. Angry pleas to stop fidgeting. Constant prodding to do better, to be more like Remy, to fit himself into the Hustons' narrow mold. Faith would intervene when she could, but she would be sharply reminded that she and the children were living in the Hustons' house now, playing by their rules.

“We'll find a way to make this work,” she said at last.

“Faith, are you coming?” Lydia leaned past the open front door. “I need help. Do you have a notepad? There's one in the car, but I didn't think to bring it. Alex, are you finished being rude?”

Alex looked at Faith, as if to say,
“Here's living proof I'm right, Mom.”

“We're coming,” Faith said. “I have paper for notes.”

“Well, I could certainly use a little assistance.” Lydia vacated the doorway.

“Maybe we could buy a tent and camp until I'm a grown-up,” Alex said. “Then I can take care of you.”

She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

T
he row house had been designed for convenience. The first story held a spacious living area that flowed into a formal dining room, with a kitchen, powder room and small breakfast nook in the rear. The second had a narrow hallway, three bedrooms and a bath. The third story was a large attic used for storage.

Today the first two floors were enough to deal with. She found Lydia in the back bedroom on the second floor.

At sixty-six, Faith's mother was an attractive woman who routinely visited her gym, her image consultant, and her plastic surgeon for required nips and tucks. Her most recent face-lift had erased years but not the lingering traces of her cynical world view. Even when Lydia smiled, her blue eyes, so much like Faith's own, rarely warmed.

Lydia wasn't making any attempt to smile now.

“I'm sorry, Mother.” Faith tried to put her arm around Lydia's shoulders, but her mother moved away.

Lydia didn't glance at her. “Sympathy is nice, but it doesn't help matters, does it?”

“Actually, some people believe it helps a lot.”

“It won't fix what's wrong here.”

“That's going to take a parade of workmen and some uncalculated amount of money.” As she searched the house for her mother, Faith had informally catalogued the problems. The wood floors were deeply scarred. Ceilings were stained from unrepaired leaks. All the exposed plaster needed patching and painting. Wallpaper had to be stripped—probably layers of it—right down to bare walls. The kitchen was filthy and so out-of-date that she doubted most of the appliances worked. The powder room toilet was missing a seat, and the sink had no faucet.

That was just for openers.

“It's my own fault.” Lydia was so tight-lipped it was surprising sound emerged. “I pretended the house wasn't here.”

She faced Faith, clearly preferring her daughter's face to the sight of exposed electrical outlets and frayed extension cords. Two bare mattresses lined one wall, and the air here was worse than stale. The unmistakable scent of urine added a pathetic top note. “This was your sister's room.”

“I know.”

“How could anyone deface it this way?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hire a contractor. Pay what needs to be paid. Do what needs to be done.”

Faith wondered if “doing what needs to be done” was her mother's mantra. She tried to point out the problems as gently as possible. “Do you have time? The job's going to require a lot of supervision, even if you can schedule a good contractor—which is tough, because they're all so busy. And when the work's finished, you could end up with the same problems all over again. Students aren't necessarily the best—”

“Then I'll find professionals to rent it this time. If the house is renovated, that shouldn't be hard.” Lydia crumpled a little. “And no, I don't have the time. Of course I don't. This is an election year. My appointment book is as thick as the Yellow Pages even if your father's not up for reelection. But what choice do I have?”

The answer, when it came to her, was so simple, so perfect. Faith was amazed neither of them had seen it from the beginning.

She eased into it. “You said in the car that the house is going to be mine one day?”

“Don't tell me you're just going to sell it when it's yours. I don't want to hear it.”

“Give it to me
now.
Let me take over.”

Lydia frowned. “Look around, Faith. I can't imagine what renovations will cost. You don't have the means. You can't even afford to rent a place to live on your own.”

“I could afford to own this house. The children and I can live here while the repairs are under way. I can do some of them myself to save money.”

She was getting excited now. Eight months had passed since she'd felt anything like enthusiasm; now she held on to it. “I can paint and wallpaper. I can refinish cabinets and maybe even floors. And I can be on the spot to supervise everything else and make sure it's done right.”

“Live in Georgetown? With the children?” Lydia sounded as if Faith had just proposed a move to Outer Mongolia.

Faith was still thinking out loud. “I wouldn't even have to buy a car right away. The bus system is adequate. This way I won't have to find a job immediately. If we don't have to pay rent, we can live on the money I got from the sale of the house and cottage for at least a year, and I'll still have enough to invest for college. I can help the children settle in and adjust. They—”

“How would you get them to school?” Lydia paused. “You're not talking about taking them out of the academy?”

Remy and Alex attended a private academy with a small student body and a traditional approach to education. There, with children from nearly identical family backgrounds, the values and religious beliefs they'd grown up with were strictly reinforced. Until David's announcement, Remy had flourished in the regimented environment. Alex never had.

When Faith didn't answer, Lydia crossed the room to run a finger along a peeling window ledge. Beyond the narrow, overgrown backyard, Faith could see the Whitehurst Freeway, but not far away the Potomac glimmered, and at night the lights of Rosslyn, Virginia, were undoubtedly spectacular.

“I can't believe you'd consider taking them away from their friends and teachers. They've already lost their father and their home.”

“They haven't lost David.” Faith hurried on before her mother could object. “And it was hard for them to stay at the academy for the rest of last year, to be whispered about and pitied. Anywhere else what happened would have been overlooked or forgotten quickly, but not there, not—”

“People move on. Things will be better—”

“Maybe, but maybe it's time Remy and Alex discovered that the world isn't the little nest we made for them. Maybe overprotecting them was as bad as exposing them to everything that came along. They had no resources to face what happened with David.
I
had no resources.”

“Surely you, of all people, know that bad things can happen when you least expect them. You grew up knowing that.”

For once Faith chose not to be cautious. “After Hope was kidnapped, you built a fortress around your life and raised me inside it. I grew up being afraid of the big, bad world. I married a man who could give me the life I was already accustomed to. I didn't ever question anything. And now the walls are tumbling and the gate's open. But if the children and I move in with you and Dad, the walls will go up again. Even higher.”

Lydia's voice was even colder than usual. “I'm sorry you see our offer to help as a prison.”

“That's not what I'm saying.” Faith joined her mother at the windows. “Look, be honest. You don't want us living with you. The children drive you crazy, and it's only going to get worse until they're through adolescence. On top of that, you don't want the responsibility of this house. Let me take over.”

“I don't want my grandchildren living here. You know what happened in this house.”

“The house isn't cursed. The house is a disaster, but it isn't haunted. A terrible thing happened, but that was a long time ago. Life has to go on.”

Lydia crossed her arms. “Right after…Before I had to face the fact Hope was gone for good, I wanted to raze everything. Tear it to the ground and build another in its place. A different house. Any house. But, of course, I couldn't. Even in those days, the preservationists would have had my head if I'd tried. I thought about selling it. We needed the money to buy our property in Virginia. But in those days, nobody wanted to live at the site of the infamous Huston kidnapping.”

Faith remembered that O. J. Simpson's house had been demolished after its sale. And Nicole Simpson hadn't even been murdered there.

Lydia faced her daughter. “So I held on to it. Despite the tour companies that brought people to stand on the sidewalk and stare twice a day. Despite only being able to rent to students. And eventually, when I knew Hope wasn't coming back, I no longer wanted to sell.”

“Maybe the house needs family in it again. I know living in the city would be a big change for Remy and Alex. They wouldn't be happy at first. And maybe it would be a mistake to bring them here. But what's one more change among so many? We'd be independent, and we'd be doing you a favor. You don't have to give me the house now, if you don't want to make it final. Just let us live here until we're back on our feet.”

“There might be tax consequences for you if I hand it over before I die. I'll have to talk to my attorney.”

Despite a host of misgivings, Faith was becoming more excited. “That's a good idea.”

“Your father won't approve. I would have taken a mortgage to put it back in shape, then used what rent I got to pay it off. I can guarantee he won't do a thing to help you fix it up.”

“I don't need his help,” Faith said.

“Joe doesn't have any say over whether you move in or not.” Lydia smiled grimly. “This is my house. His name isn't on the deed. If I decide to give it to you, he'll have no choice but to go along.”

“I don't want to come between you.”

Lydia didn't answer.

Faith scanned the room that had once been Hope's nursery. “This house deserves another chance. It's been punished enough. It deserves better than beer bashes and screaming stereos. I can turn it into a home again, if you'll let me.”

“I can probably live with the fallout if you can.” Lydia almost sounded as if the thought of Joe's disapproval pleased her.

“It looks like we might have a deal.”

Faith felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. Briefly. Lightly. But the touch, possibly even meant to be comforting, surprised her more than any other event of the day.

R
emy's room in the McLean house was nearly as large as an entire floor of the house on Prospect. She had her own bathroom and a closet big enough to stable a horse. Faith wasn't sure what she and David had been thinking when they agreed to the architect's plans. Perhaps they had hoped if they made the house perfect for the children, their lives would be perfect, as well. She remembered that she had wanted the house to be so welcoming, so accommodating, that the children would never want to leave. Unfortunately, she had been successful.

Now, hours after the trip to Georgetown, the McLean house was oddly silent. At the moment Faith stood in the doorway of Remy's room and waited for her solemn-faced daughter to invite her in. Remy, sitting cross-legged in the center of her white canopy bed, didn't say the words.

“Megan couldn't make it, huh?” Faith said.

“She's sleeping over at Jennifer's.” Remy flopped down on her back and stared at her canopy.

“May I come in?”

“If you have to.”

Faith crossed the room, passing a wall of built-in shelves neatly displaying fourteen years of Christmas and birthday gifts, an historical exhibit of Remy's life. She lowered herself to the edge of her daughter's bed. “You're upset.”

“No I'm not.”

Faith tried to figure out how to get to her through a back door. “If I were you—and I know I'm not—I'd feel like my life was ending. Everything is changing, and you have no power to stop it.”

“So?”

“Well, being powerless sucks.”

“You don't have to talk like a kid so I'll listen.”

Faith waited.

“Everybody knows about Daddy. At school, here on the street. How come you didn't know right away? You were married to him.”

Faith knew Remy was particularly hurt by David's absence. Of the two children, she had been closer to her father. Remy and David had always had a bond that sustained them through any ruffling of peaceful family waters. But not this time.

Faith drew a deep breath before she spoke. “I can tell you honestly that this never crossed my mind. It was a very deep secret, one even your father didn't want to face.”

“Yeah, well, he's done a pretty good job of facing it now, hasn't he? He's living with a man. They have sex. That's so sick I can't even think about it.”

“You don't have to think about it, honey. But no matter what the rest of his life is about now, he's still your father.”

“He shouldn't be anybody's father. He'll never be mine again. I never want to see him.”

Faith knew better than to explain that, eventually, Remy would have to see David. Ironically, the very man who believed anti-discrimination legislation was unnecessary would have the court on his side if things came to that.

“Let's talk about you right now,” she said. “Look, what can I do to help you through this?”

“I want to go to boarding school.”

Faith reached for Remy's hand, but Remy shook her off, punching the next words for emphasis. “I don't want to live with Grandmother. I won't. And Grandfather's impossible. I'll never be allowed to have friends over or listen to music. I want to go far away and never come back.”

Faith wondered how many times she could be stabbed in the heart without bleeding to death. “You can't go to boarding school, Remy. We don't have the money for it.”

“You keep talking about money!”

“Unfortunately, I have to. You don't have to worry about being put out on the street, about not having enough food or nice clothes to wear. We're not in any danger. But extras like boarding school aren't possible.”

“We would be out on the street if Grandmother and Grandfather didn't take us in.”

“Things will get better soon. I'm going to get a job. Your dad's trying to find a good one, too, so he can pay child support.”

“Like anyone would want him now. Who wants a queer telling people what to think?”

“Remy, you will not use that word!”

“It's true.”

“It's a derogatory term, and this is your father, who's loved and cared for you since the day you were born.”

Remy turned on her side, away from Faith. “We're going to be poor forever. You've never even had a job, and he won't find one. I'll have to live with Grandmother until I graduate.”

Faith's prospects were few. She had a degree in European history and no significant work experience. She'd been destined to go on to graduate school and eventually teach—until she met David. She had always planned to go back someday, when the children were older, but she hadn't felt a burning need for a career. She had the perfect marriage and husband. What was the hurry?

Had David simply died, there would have been a huge net
work of political and social contacts she could call on. Now, though, most of them would be embarrassed and probably reluctant to hire her. She might be Joe Huston's daughter, but the senator's conservative allies would remember more clearly that she was David Bronson's clueless ex-wife.

She tried to reassure Remy. “I'm going to take some word processing classes and look for a civil service job. I'm not a total loss, you know. I'm actually pretty smart.”

“Not smart enough to figure out you were married to a homosexual.”

Faith flinched. This was an entirely new side to the child she'd believed she was raising. Now she remembered her conversation with Lydia. Here was living proof that she and David had raised offspring with no ability to cope. Remy was a delight when things went her way, but life wasn't always like that.

Unfortunately, Faith had forgotten to tell her daughter.

Faith got to her feet. Empathy hadn't worked any miracles. It was time for the truth. “Here's the plan, Remy. We've sold the house. There was no way around it. Your father and I are getting a divorce, and there's no way around that, either. You're fourteen and have to live with me, but there are some things we can control. I've thought of a way to keep us from moving to Great Falls with your grandparents.”

As she had guessed, Remy reluctantly let curiosity take the reins. “How?”

“If your grandmother says yes, we're going to move into the house on Prospect Street.”

Remy sat up. The sullen expression was replaced by incredulity. “You've got to be kidding. That house smells like someone went to the bathroom in the halls. And I saw something moving in the kitchen, maybe a rat, and there was a homeless man down the street picking cans out of somebody's trash. How would I get to school?” She paused, the reality dawning. “I wouldn't, would I?”

Faith considered how best to answer that. She was still making decisions, still proceeding with caution. “None of this is cer
tain yet. As for the academy, the tuition is too much for me if I'm going to save for college, too. I have to invest whatever I can now, so you can go to a good university.”

“Let Grandfather pay for college. He will.”

“And if he pays, you'll have no choice about where you go or what you major in. Those are the hard facts.” Faith knew from experience.

“Then let him pay for the academy. He will.”

Faith wasn't sure her father
would
pay the academy fees, even if she begged. He was still so angry at his son-in-law's humiliating “defection” that he wasn't above punishing the children just to make David squirm.

But even if he did, she didn't want to be beholden to Joe Huston. He was a rigid man, and leverage was a senator's stock in trade. If he helped Faith pay tuition, he would exact repayment in a thousand different ways, none of them endearing.

Faith looked down at her daughter. “Here's a big dose of reality, because you're old enough to handle it. The last half of the year at the academy was tough for you, and it's always been tough for your brother. I think you need a new school, one that doesn't pretend everybody in the world thinks the same way. You need a larger view.”

“I'm not going to public school.”

“Maybe you need to start over. Not boarding school, but somewhere with a different outlook. Public school could be the place.”

“You just don't want to spend your precious savings on me. You don't care.”

The telephone rang, and when Remy made no attempt to answer, Faith reached for it. Her mother was on the other end of the line.

Faith hung up a few moments later.

“You're really going to move us to that slum, aren't you?” Remy said. “No matter what I say.”

Faith wondered what she had just agreed to. She had given up the security of Great Falls and a lifestyle that was, at the very
least, familiar. She had traded that known quantity for a wreck of a house on Prospect Street and the dubious joys of city life.

She gave a short nod. “Georgetown is nobody's idea of a slum. If you think it is, then you really do need a larger view of the world. So you're about to get one. Your grandmother has decided to let us move into the house.”

“I'm not going.”

Remy had no choice. Faith only hoped that in the not too distant future her daughter would understand why this move and everything that came with it were necessary.

 

An hour after her conversation with Remy, Faith lay in the tub in the master bathroom. She had capped off her session with her daughter by breaking the news to her son. Alex, heavily involved in trying to bypass the strict controls David had set up on his computer, looked up when she finished.

“Can I live in the attic? I don't want to go unless I get to live in the attic.”

“What are you, kiddo, a bat?”

“I bet it's neat up there. And that's where the ghost lives, right?”

“There's no such thing as a ghost.”

“Mrs. Garfield said there was. She said ghosts are spirits who get kicked out of heaven for not doing what they're told.”

Faith suspected this was just another way for the eternally creative Mrs. Garfield—Alex's fifth-grade teacher—to ride herd on her son. She ruffled Alex's wild red curls. His hair—both color and texture—was only one way he was different from everyone else in the family. Faith didn't believe in ghosts, but a changeling sat right in front of her.

“Listen, maybe you can make the attic a workshop right off the bat. A place to invent.”

“Off the bat?” Alex chortled. “Off real bats? Do you think the attic really has 'em?” The thought seemed to please him.

She hoped that bats were one problem they wouldn't face.

Alex's face brightened even more. “Can I go to a different school?”

“You're okay with the idea?”

“Awesome.” He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to say anything else. “Maybe someplace where they like me better?”

Now, soaking in the whirlpool tub that she would be giving up in a little over a week, Faith wondered why she had ever agreed to enroll Alex in a school where he felt rebuffed. In her present state of mind she wanted to blame it on David, but she couldn't. She had bought an entire way of life, an entire way to think, when she had married David Bronson. And it wasn't as if she hadn't known.

Her father had been the one to introduce her to her future husband, touting the quiet young man as an up-and-coming force in conservative politics. Late bloomer Faith was just beginning to feel her own way through life, but she was so enamored of David, so thoroughly and instantly smitten, that she willingly traded her fledgling independence to become his wife.

She knew what came with the package. She had watched her own mother build her life around her father's career, so instinctively she did the same. For fifteen years she worked side by side with her husband to create a perfect family, and she learned to see it as her calling.

And she had done her job well. Time and time again she had been asked to speak on the subject of making a Christian home, an honor she avoided by claiming she was too busy making one to lecture on the subject.

On the other hand, David never missed a chance to speak on the subjects he held dear. He was soft-spoken and modest, a rarity in political and religious circles. He abstained from criticism of differing views, and stated his own succinctly and compassionately. Had he used the master of divinity degree he earned at Harvard to become the next pastor of his evangelist father's mega-church, the theme of every sermon would have been “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

But on Arnold Bronson's death, David hadn't ascended to
his father's ministry. Now Faith wondered if even then her soon-to-be ex-husband had been wrestling with his personal demons. For in keeping with his father's commandments, he would have been called on to forcefully revile the sin of homosexuality. And surely some part of him had questioned the wisdom of that.

With her eyes closed and the soothing fragrance of chamomile and citrus surrounding her, Faith could almost feel sorry for David. He had lied; he had used her to perpetuate a myth about who he was. But she knew he had never wanted to cause her pain.

She opened her eyes and looked down at her body stretched languidly in the herbal-scented water. She was never pleased at what she saw. She had a runway model's small breasts and narrow hips, but not the long legs to go with them.

She wondered if her very lack of feminine attributes had made her neutral enough for David to continue the farce of their marriage.

The thought hadn't yet lost the power to torment her. She shuddered and scrutinized herself more closely. Yes, she was ordinary, but weren't most women, and men still found them sexy? Did her dissatisfaction with her body and her lack of confidence come from a fifteen-year relationship with a man who couldn't, by his very nature, find her sexually appealing?

Had she unconsciously picked up David's disinterest and taken responsibility for it? Just the way she had taken responsibility for every single thing in their obscenely perfect lives?