Prospect Street (8 page)

Faith imagined that was one story Alex could do without. “Is there anything I can do to help with tea?”

“Mariana will bring it to us.” Dottie Lee lowered herself slowly to a seat at the head of the table. She rang a tiny crystal bell. Titi awoke with a start and yapped in the same tinkling key.

A connecting door opened, and a woman who appeared to be only slightly younger than Dottie Lee came through the doorway carrying a bamboo tray. She was stooped and wrinkled, but she walked with a firm step.

“Mariana used to do all our baking.” Dottie Lee removed a black china teapot from the tray and set it on a trivet. “But now we simply buy what we need. Mariana likes a daily walk.”

“I don't like to walk at all,” Mariana said with just the hint of an Hispanic accent. She wore her steel-gray hair like Buster Brown, and the bangs skimmed lovely chocolate-brown eyes. “This one, she likes to get rid of me.”

“Mariana has strong views on every subject,” Dottie Lee said, as if she herself didn't.

Faith had expected tea and perhaps some cookies. She hadn't expected the feast Mariana set on the table. Tiny sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, cookies. “This looks wonderful. Aren't we lucky?”

“Your mother used to join me for tea.” Dottie Lee took a tray of fancifully cut sandwiches and passed them to Alex. “In the days when she still knew who she was.”

Faith wasn't sure how to respond to that. Lydia Huston knew exactly who she was. She was the wife of Joe Huston, powerful Virginia senator.

“How can somebody forget who she is? Unless she has amnesia.” Alex started to reach for a sandwich, but Faith barred him from the tray.

“You need to put Titi on the floor and wash your hands.”

He protested. “She's not dirty.”

“She certainly isn't,” Dottie Lee agreed. “But perhaps a hand washing would be in order to please your sadly mistaken mother.”

Mariana led him from the room. Titi waited silently by his chair.

“How
is
Lydia?” Dottie Lee asked.

Faith had the uncomfortable feeling that Dottie Lee already knew the answer. “Busy. She does fund-raising in what spare time she has.”

“For missing children, presumably?”

“No. For my father. For the party.” Faith took several sandwiches from the platter.

Dottie Lee passed a plate of scones. “Odd, I think. Don't you?”

“She's interested in many things.” But none of them passionately. Faith doubted there was a passionate bone in her mother's body. She took a scone bursting with currants and set it on her plate.

“Let's talk about you, instead,” Dottie Lee said. “You have plans for the house?”

Faith decided to be honest. “The first order of business is making it livable. Beyond that, we'll have to take it a little at a time. You know how neglected it's been.”

“Your grandmother would turn your mother over her knee if she was alive to do it.”

Faith realized they were back to Lydia again. “Did you know my grandmother?”

“Yes, very well. You didn't, of course.”

“No. She died before I was born.”

“Millicent died too young. Malaria, I believe.”

“I think so.” Faith was surprised she wasn't sure. The past had never been a prime topic in the Huston household.

“You might ask your mother about her,” Dottie Lee said. “She was a woman of many talents.”

Alex returned to be served.

“You will not feed Titi from your plate while your mother is watching.” Dottie Lee passed him jam and butter.

Alex ladled enough jam on his plate to induce a diabetic coma. “Who are all those men on the walls in your hall? They look important. Maybe even famous.”

“Friends.”

Faith looked up. Dottie Lee was smiling her magnificent smile, and Faith suddenly understood what her mother had meant about Dottie Lee being the wrong kind of woman.

“Dottie Lee was just telling me about your great-grandmother,” Faith said quickly.

“Did she live in our house?” Alex's mouth was full, but he didn't spew crumbs, for which Faith was grateful.

“She did for many years, but not as an adult. She was born there, several years before I was born in this house. In the very room your mother will undoubtedly take as her own. Millicent moved away after she married Harold, of course. Her parents continued to live next door until they died, and soon after that, your grandparents moved in.”

Faith was curious now. “Then you must have known my great-grandparents, too. At least a little.”

“My dear, I am a fountain of information. I sat on Violet's knee as a girl, and she taught me my ABC's. I spent many a happy hour on her mother's lap, too. Candace was like a grandmother to me.”

Faith was surprised to find that the relatives she knew so little about were real people to Dottie Lee. “I hope you'll tell me about them.”

“In good time.” Dottie Lee bit into a cucumber sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “I will tell you this, since you need a surprise in your life, and a mystery.” She paused and frowned at Alex. “Alex Bronson, does your mother need a mystery?”

“Does her sister getting kidnapped count?”

“Yes, it surely does. But I was thinking of something a little more cheerful.”

Mariana came into the room with another pot of tea. “Stop fussing and sit,” Dottie Lee commanded.

Mariana muttered but did. Dottie Lee passed her the plates so she could help herself.

Faith was glad Mariana had joined them. She was always uncomfortable when others served her.

“I'm sorry, but right now the only mystery I want in my life is the kind that comes with an author's name on the front cover.”

“You've grown up to think a mystery means an unpleasant surprise.” Dottie Lee poured cream into Mariana's tea. “You've had your share, and no one's told you otherwise. But you aren't correct, you know. So here's proof I'm right. You see the move to Prospect Street as something of a comedown, I expect?”

Faith didn't deny it.

“Others have not felt that way,” Dottie Lee said. “And at your house, hidden away from prying eyes, is the proof.”

Alex's eyes were huge. He had sharpened his reading teeth on Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys, and he fancied himself something of a detective. “Can you give us more clues?”

“I can, but I won't. This way, Alex Bronson, you will have to come and visit me often. Perhaps something will just slip out when neither of us is expecting it. You'll be surprised at everything I know.”

Faith watched as Alex and Dottie Lee continued their banter. She was delighted that her son had found someone else who saw him as the delightful young man he was. At the same time, she was sad that it hadn't happened sooner, and in his own family.

Dottie Lee looked up, almost as if she had heard Faith's thoughts. “Your daughter looks astonishingly like Lydia did at her age, but your son is the one who is very much like her, you know.”

Faith must have looked surprised, but Dottie Lee gave a throaty laugh. “Another mystery? I'm delighted, dear. We can only hope I live long enough to tell you everything I know.”

As if to tempt fate, Dottie Lee spread clotted cream on another scone and lifted it in a toast.

E
verybody liked Pavel Quinn. In the days before Communism took a tumble, a former lover explained that everybody liked him because nobody had to love him. Pavel, she claimed, knew exactly where the boundary between the two was drawn and marched the perimeter as heavily armed as an East Berlin border guard.

He'd reasoned patiently with her, of course. Pavel might be a Russian name, but not every Russian was a Communist, certainly no one in his family. And clearly no Quinn had ever tramped German borders. They were too busy throwing rocks in Belfast.

The lover threw up her hands and orchestrated her own march out Pavel's front door. He had watched her go with a mixture of sadness and relief. She was a Chilean beauty, the most inventive lover he'd ever invited into his bed, and a woman who loved good food almost as much as he did.

She was also possessive and temperamental. She had tried too hard to find things inside him that simply weren't there. Who would know better than he?

Since then, Pavel had taken other lovers. He loved women,
the sounds they made when they were contented, the warmth they exuded sleeping next to him, the fragrance of their hair, the pillowy softness of their breasts. He wouldn't say he loved them all with the same intensity, but the experiences were remarkably similar. Women came into his life. He enjoyed them immensely. They left.

Today he was helping one of them pack.

“You are the most exasperating man!” Odette threw the contents of one dresser drawer into a shopping bag. Since the drawer in question was filled with neatly folded lingerie, there was room once she finished. She topped it with knit shirts and the sexiest shorts south of the Mason-Dixon line.

“Well, I know I'm not easy to live with.” Pavel, who was helpfully folding a lavender cotton sweater, felt obligated to take his share of the blame.

“That goes without saying, but that's not what I'm talking about.” Odette jerked open the final drawer and scooped out socks and a bag of cosmetics.

“What are you talking about?”

“You're a radar screen without any blips.”

He supposed that was what came of making love to an air traffic controller. “You wanted blips?”

She straightened and frowned. “That's what every woman wants, Pavel. You're old enough to have discovered this on your own.”

He was forty-one, fast approaching the old-dog-immune-to-new-tricks phase of his life. Especially where women were concerned. “You wanted fights? Make-up sex? What, Odette?”

Odette sighed. She wasn't a particularly emotional woman. “No, I don't like fights, either. Maybe knowing I made blips on
your
radar screen would have done it.”

“You did. Of course.”

She looked up. “I need another bag. And no, I didn't. By next week you'll have forgotten I was living here.”

“I'm going to miss you.”

“Give it up, Pavel.” She was a leggy brunette with hair that
swung halfway down her back and the figure of a bomber squadron pinup girl. Her features were too pronounced, even coarse, perhaps, but that had made her more appealing. Pavel hated perfection.

Having run out of things to say, he left for the kitchen, fishing under detergent bottles, cleaning supplies and dirty dish-cloths to come up with another paper bag. She took it when he returned and piled what was left of her things inside. “Well, that's it. I'm gone.”

“Do you want me to call? We could have dinner next weekend.”

“If you have to ask, the answer is no.” Odette looked up. “The answer is no anyway, so don't bother.” A half smile twisted her lips. “I guess we had some fun, big guy. Have a nice life.”

Since he fully expected to, he smiled back. Then, before she could resist, he gathered her to his chest for the ultimate bear hug.

“I might miss that,” she said, after he stepped away. “But not much else about this place. Hire somebody who knows what he's doing to finish the renovations. The place is a dump.” Odette lifted the bags, one in each arm, shaking her head when he tried to take one for the trip to the car. “I'm out of here.”

He walked her to the front door and opened it solicitously. Then he stood on the threshold and watched her navigate the front steps. Once she was safely in the driver's seat with the bags tucked in the back, he headed inside, realizing at the kitchen refrigerator that he should have stayed to watch her drive away.

He closed the refrigerator and twisted the cap of a Heineken. His new sink stared up at him from the middle of the checkerboard tile floor. He wasn't sure how long it had been there.

“There's a difference between a dump and a challenge,” he said to no one.

The beer slid down a throat that hadn't had time to parch. Mockingbirds had only just started to sing on his magnolia tree.
Unfortunately, Odette had been of that species called “dreaded early riser,” and now he had an entire day ahead of him.

He capped the Heineken and put it back inside the refrigerator door. He didn't need alcohol at this hour. He needed food and coffee, both of which were in short supply in his kitchen. Next on his wish list was the business section of the
Post,
and as usual someone had swiped his copy off the sidewalk before he could get to it.

He lived in Georgetown, and there were dozens of places to go for breakfast. But there was only one he considered. He raked his fingers through uncombed dark curls and went in search of his Birkenstocks.

 

Faith awakened on moving day with dread like a clenched fist pressing against her chest. In the days since she had decided on the move to Georgetown, she'd had little time to question her decision and less to prepare for it. She had packed and sorted and tagged boxes until she was so exhausted she was probably ignoring essentials simply to avoid packing them.

On Tuesday a local auction house would hold an estate sale, and everything Faith didn't move today would disappear into the arms of collectors and scavengers. Although the rooms were filled with furniture and items she wasn't taking, she wondered how she was going to fit everything she
was
keeping into the row house.

She took her final shower in the master bathroom, chucked her towel and the few toiletries she hadn't already packed into a box, then changed into the jeans and shirt she'd left out last night. Finally she went to wake Remy.

She found her daughter sitting on the window seat, staring at the same view she'd looked out on nearly every day of their lives in this house. She was surrounded by boxes. In the end there had been little except furniture that Remy was willing to part with.

“The movers will be here in a half hour.” Faith joined her at the window. “If you take a quick shower you'll still have time to eat.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Faith knew this wasn't the moment to sympathize out loud. Neither of them had the emotional resources for it. “I'm going to check on Alex. I think I heard him stirring.”

“He's already dressed. He's excited, like this is some sort of adventure.”

“Then he's the lucky one, isn't he?”

Faith found her son clearing a bookshelf. She had asked him repeatedly to pack his books. “You only have half an hour before they come,” she warned.

“I'm almost done.”

He looked up and grinned, and she had to smile back. “I'll meet you downstairs when you're finished. We have juice and cereal.”

In the kitchen she poured juice for everybody and got the milk from the fridge. She had cleared away everything else and scrubbed the shelves clean. The smaller refrigerator she had ordered for the row house hadn't been delivered. For a few days, at least, they were going to make do without one.

The doorbell rang before she could pour the cereal. She knew the movers hadn't arrived because the neighborhood dogs would be sure to announce their presence. She sipped her juice as she walked to the front door, throwing it open to stare at David.

The juice pooled in her throat until she thought to swallow. “What are
you
doing here?”

He held up a McDonald's bag. “I brought breakfast.” He stepped closer. “Faith, I know how hard this is. I wanted to help.”

“You think coming today will help?”

“Let me take the kids somewhere and get them out of the way. They don't need to watch their life being dismantled.”

She didn't know what to say. Until now he hadn't pushed, and she had respected Remy and Alex's own timetable for spending time with their father. But neither child had gotten closer to wanting a visit.

“They won't get used to the idea that things have changed unless they spend time with me,” David said. “Patience is well and good, but it's not working. They need to know I love them as much as I ever did.”

Reluctantly she stepped aside and made room for him to pass.

“I brought sausage biscuits. Alex can never get enough.”

“He'll be down in a minute. Remy will take longer. This is harder on her.”

“She's always been so well-adjusted. I know it's hard now—”

“She's never been tested. That's why. We've kept our children in a bubble. Alex is resilient, but Remy has no defenses against a world that isn't picture-perfect.”

He didn't try to point out a brighter side, which surprised her. If Faith had worn sunglasses against the glare of reality, he had worn blinders.

In the kitchen he put the bag on the counter and began to take out the food, setting it in neatly spaced piles. “Do you have any pointers?”

“You're asking my advice?”

“I am.” He smiled, but it didn't touch the pain in his eyes. “I'm afraid. Afraid of my own kids.” He shook his head, and the smile faded.

For once she refused to play diplomat. “If I had any advice I'd take it myself. I'm flying blind here.”

“You're coping.”

“You seem to be coping, too.”

“I wake up every morning and wish I were somebody else. Then I remember I was somebody else for years and years, and in the end I couldn't handle it.”

“Please don't try to make me feel anything except anger toward you, okay? I can't handle compassion yet. I don't have it in me.”

“We'll put it on hold for a while.”

“Don't hold your breath.”

Their eyes met and held. “Do you know what I want more than anything?” he said.

“No. And I don't want to know.”

“I want to have a real conversation with you again someday.”

“What are the chances, David?” The voice that emerged was Lydia's, sarcastic and bitter.

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

“We have the kids to think about. That's all I can handle. More, at times.” She turned away to collect herself. Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and when she turned back, Alex was standing in the doorway.

“Dad.” He froze in place, as if the man standing at the counter had come to rob them.

“Alex.” David smiled. “I brought breakfast. I knew you'd be hungry.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I just told you.”

“You don't come for months and you come today?”

“Timing doesn't seem to be my strong point.”

“Go away,” Alex said. “Don't you think you've hurt Mom enough?”

Faith couldn't let that pass. “Alex, your dad's not trying to hurt me. He's here to see you and Remy. He misses you.”

“Well, he
has
hurt you. I know. I hear you crying at night, even if you think I don't.”

“Nothing I did was meant to hurt anybody,” David said. “You need to understand that. I care how your mother feels, and I always will.”

“Oh? As much as you care about some man?”

“Alex…” Faith went to her son's side. “I can take care of myself. Let me, okay?”

Alex looked straight at his father. “I don't want to see you.”

“I want you and Remy to spend the day with me.”

Alex turned and ran back up the stairs.

“Well, that went well,” David said.

Faith was fighting tears. “Neither of them is going anywhere with you if Ham's there.”

“Give me credit for some sense.”

“That's going to be a condition of all your visits.”

“In other words, you don't want them to face who I really am?”

“I don't want you flaunting it in their faces.”

He stood a little straighter. “I'm going up to see Remy. If she's as resistant as Alex, I'll leave. But once you're settled, I'm going to visit regularly. Even if it takes a court order.”

He didn't wait for an answer. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and his repeated knocking. Remy's door was locked. She didn't answer, and she refused to let her father in.

 

Faith drove ahead of the first load to Prospect Street, leaving a grumpy Lydia in charge of the children and the neglected contents of Alex's closet. Faith had discovered her son's clothes hanging in place when she went to check on him after David's departure. Alex himself was sitting on the closet floor, pants legs and shirttails hiding his tears.

A local company, surprisingly cheap, was doing the work. The two men had managed to pack the truck without consequence, but now she wondered how they would lift the rosewood spinet up four narrow steps and maneuver it through the front door.

The spinet had belonged to Faith's great-grandmother Violet, and once upon a time it had graced the row house. Lydia had given it to Faith many years before.

Faith knew that bringing the piano back to Prospect Street was foolish. She was leaving more useful pieces to make room for an instrument that was seldom played. But even though she had never known her great-grandmother, she felt a kinship that transcended common sense. The spinet belonged to the house in a way that the walnut entertainment center never could. She had abandoned one to make room for the other.