Prospect Street (9 page)

Once the truck arrived, she supervised the placement of beds, dressers and area rugs, then boxes in the kitchen. Finally she stood to one side with arms folded and watched the men prepare to unload the spinet.

“You're sure you don't need another man to help?”

The driver grinned at her. She estimated he was two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. “This bitty thing? I can carry it in the palm of one hand.”

“Please don't.”

“I'll play you a tune when it's all tucked in pretty.”

Faith heard a door slam and looked over her shoulder to see that Dottie Lee was standing on her lawn. Dottie Lee was arrayed in scarlet gauze harem pants and a matching tunic embroidered in silver. She seemed excited by all the commotion.

“Violet's piano,” Dottie Lee said. “She taught me my first C scale on that very instrument.”

Faith exchanged quick greetings. “Did she play well?”

“Goodness, Faith, she was a gifted musician. Her husband gave her that piano as a wedding present. You know so little it's shameful. Does your mother still play? She inherited Violet's talent.”

“My mother?” Faith couldn't remember her mother touching the piano. She'd never realized Lydia knew one key from another. Despite a plethora of classes in every womanly art, Faith herself had never been offered lessons.

“I take it Lydia gave up her music along with her spirit,” Dottie Lee said.

“My daughter played when she was a little girl.” Faith wondered where Remy's fascination with music had gone. The academy was too small to offer more than the most basic music curriculum, but Remy had never complained. Instead she had taken up gymnastics and soccer to be with neighborhood friends.

“Nobody plays the piano now,” Faith said. “But it wanted to come home.”

“Of course it did. I'm pleased to see you listened.” Dottie Lee disappeared back inside.

The movers were on the first step now, and so far they weren't breaking a sweat. Faith wasn't sure who to feel sorrier for. The driver at the bottom, who had to bear most of the
weight, or the man at the top, who had to bend over to stay in the proper position.

She wished the spinet was a full-sized upright. Then the movers would have an extra helper. She was afraid to watch and afraid not to.

The men made it to the top step with a minimum of grunting and groaning. Passersby had gawked all morning. Students, mostly, who streamed toward Wisconsin Avenue from Georgetown University. Now a small crowd gathered, as if the piano was better entertainment than the shops.

“Five bucks says the guy at the bottom drops it,” one male voice said.

Faith looked around and watched two young men in Hoya T-shirts slapping palms. Her stomach knotted.

When she focused on the movers again, they were frozen in position. Then, slowly, the driver slid his hands lower so he could lift higher. The spinet began to tilt, and the driver cursed sharply. Faith gasped in horror.

A man broke free of the crowd and sprinted to the steps. He was large and muscular, and before either of the movers could respond, he steadied the piano with his chest and knees. Then he reached beneath it, stooping carefully as he did, to give the extra boost the movers needed. The driver positioned his hands and lifted, moving up a step as he did. With one more step the piano was level with the landing, and the men eased it through the doorway.

“Well, he would have dropped it if that guy hadn't come along,” the gambler told his friend.

“You owe me five bucks.”

Faith didn't stay around long enough to see if the gambler paid his debt. She started up the steps and reached her living room as the three men set the piano against the appropriate wall. She waited until the stranger straightened before she spoke.

“I can't thank you enough.” She held out her hand. “I'm Faith Bronson, and that's my great-grandmother's piano.”

The man wiped his palms on the legs of his ragged cutoffs and took her hand. “Pavel Quinn. I live on O Street.”

He was a giant, broad-shouldered and big-boned enough to hire on permanently with the movers. His hair was a chocolate-brown mop of curls that fell over his forehead and ears, and his eyes were the same color. He clearly hadn't shaved for days—possibly even a week—and his T-shirt was speckled with paint. But at the moment he looked like a hero to her.

“I'm glad you happened by,” she said.

“We wouldn't have dropped it,” the driver assured her. “Never have dropped no piano, not in all my years.” The movers left to unpack the rest of the truck so they could drive back to McLean for the final load.

Pavel Quinn took in the interior of the row house. “Your landlord ought to be shot.”

She was too relieved to take offense. “It's my house. A work in progress. Not much progress, though.”

“Your house?” He frowned. “The Hustons sold it after all these years?”

She wasn't surprised Pavel Quinn knew the story. Everybody knew the story. “I'm a Bronson by marriage. A Huston by birth.” She hadn't decided whether to resume her maiden name, but she was leaning toward it. “Soon to be a Huston again, I guess.”

His gaze warmed and focused on her. “Divorce?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry.”

He continued to stare at her. She could almost see the bits of information she'd given click into place. Her shoulders drooped. She was exhausted. The move was taking more than a physical toll, and the elation at saving the piano was gone. “My life's an open book, isn't it? Is there anybody in Washington who doesn't know my shoe size?”

He winced. “I'm sorry. I really am. It's just that local history fascinates me. It's something of a hobby. And this house…”

He didn't have to say more. “I know. It's a landmark.”

“Mine is, too. In the nineteenth century a Secretary of State
died at a dinner party there. Fame's a consequence of life in Georgetown. You'll get used to it.”

He was trying to be nice, but she was too tired to pretend he had succeeded. “Did
your
wife leave you for another woman?”

“No wife.”

“Then you don't know what my life is like.”

“How many times have I put my foot in it since I stepped through the doorway?”

She took a long, slow breath. “I'm sorry. You've been nothing but kind. It's me. I—”

“Do you always take responsibility for other people's rudeness?”

“Always.”

“We'll make a pact. You don't have to take responsibility for mine.”

Ashamed of herself, she started toward the door to show him out. “Thank you for being in the right place at the right time.”

“I was having breakfast at Booeymonger.”

“And you came to watch the fun. We seem to be the neighborhood circus today.”

“You'll find we're all curious about each other here. We're a small town in a big city.”

“You should meet my next-door neighbor.”

“Dottie Lee?” He grinned. He had a smile that shone through every pore, nothing polite or restrained about it. “I know Dottie Lee. Everybody knows her. You've moved next door to the neighborhood historian.”

The movers came in with a sofa and plunked it across from the spinet. “That's everything,” the driver said. “We'll be getting back to Virginia now.” They took off down the steps.

Faith had to lock the house and go. “Well, thanks for your curiosity,” she told Pavel. “You saved a piece of history.”

“I'm sure we'll run into each other again. If you're on O Street, stop by. My house is the Stick style Victorian on the corner of 31st. But don't expect the inside to match the outside. Mine's a work in progress, too.” He held out his hand.

She took it, and hers disappeared inside. Nothing about the man wasn't generous.

After Pavel left she trailed her fingers over the spinet keys. The sound was sadly discordant. For years the little piano had simply been a piece of furniture. Now it was the centerpiece of the room. The spinet needed a good tuning.

Very much like Faith's own life.

R
emy wasn't sure she liked her grandmother. When her friends talked about their “nanas” sewing Halloween costumes or putting together scrapbooks, she always felt different, because there was no way in the world Lydia would ever do those things for her.

Lydia didn't ignore her, of course. She gave presents on special occasions, extravagant presents like real sapphire ear studs and a pink cashmere twin set. But even though her friends were envious, Remy wished that just once her grandmother had asked what she wanted. Then she would have known that Remy never wore pink, and that instead of sapphires, she'd really wanted rubies, her birthstone.

Although Megan could talk to her grandmother about everything, Remy had never talked to Lydia about anything important. So today she was doubly surprised when Lydia came into her room while her mother was in Georgetown with the movers and lowered herself to the edge of Remy's desk chair.

“Are you doing all right, Remy?”

Remy, who was sitting cross-legged on her carpet, knew better than to say no. No one wanted to know how she was really doing, most particularly her grandmother.

“I'm okay.” She cleared her throat and tried to remember the kind of stuff she used to say to make an impression, the stuff she'd been so good at once upon a time. “Did Alex get his closet packed?”

“It's unlikely he'll ever be able to wear any of his clothes again, but yes, he did.”

Remy thought maybe Alex really wasn't as happy about leaving their house as he pretended. He was trying to be the man of the house now that her father had flipped out, but she thought that not packing his stuff was the same thing as chaining himself to a front porch pillar.

Lydia, who looked as if she would like to be anywhere else, got stiffly to her feet and went to the window. “How old were you when you moved here? Do you remember?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you were four. Alex must have been almost two. Nobody could keep up with him.”

“Who wanted to?” Remy wished her grandmother would leave before her limited store of small talk gave out.

“You were a pretty little girl. Quiet. Well behaved.” Lydia crossed her arms over her chest and turned. She was frowning. “Like your mother.”

“I'm tired of people telling me I'm like her. I'm like
me.
” The words left her lips, and Remy's heart sank immediately. She knew better than to cross her grandmother. She was in for it now.

Lydia didn't miss a beat. “You're angry at her, aren't you?”

For a moment Remy couldn't believe she'd heard her grandmother right. “What?”

“You're angry at
her.
Don't pretend you're not. You think this move is her fault.”

“She married my father, didn't she? Nobody twisted her arm.”

“And you think she should have seen into the future.” Lydia shook her head, but maybe not in anger, as Remy had expected. For a moment she almost looked sad.

“Yeah, that's what I think.” Remy wove her fingers together.
“I think if she'd looked down the road a little, it would have helped.”

“You probably think I don't understand.”

Remy knew better than to answer that. Even now.

Lydia grimaced. “I can see you do, Remy. You probably don't think I understand anything. Like how much you want to blame somebody.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Of course it does.” Lydia's tone hardened. “I wish I knew how to make you believe that.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

Lydia turned back to the window. “I used to talk to my grandmother all the time. For years she was my best friend.”

Lydia as
anybody's
best friend was hard to imagine. “Did she look like us?”

Lydia perched on the edge of the window seat and faced her granddaughter again. “Like us?”

“Like my mother and me. Everybody says we look like you. Did you look like her?”

“Oh, no.” Lydia nearly smiled. For a moment she almost looked like a girl. “Not at all. She had red hair. Bright red, almost orange, even when she was a grandmother. Her name was Violet, but my grandfather called her Carrot Top. Not very original, I suppose, but he meant well. She was small, like we are, but very round. And freckled. I have pictures.”

“That's where Alex gets his red hair.”

“I'm sure.”

“Nobody ever tells me anything.”

Lydia raised a brow. “Somebody just did.”

“I don't want to move to Georgetown. I don't want to live in that house.”

“I know.”

“Mom's acting like it's a good thing, like it doesn't matter if I hate it or not.”

“It matters. You just don't want to see that right now.”

“If she cared how
I
feel, she'd find another way.”

Lydia didn't tell her that was childish, the way Remy had expected. “When I visited the house on Prospect as a little girl, it was a very different place.” She got to her feet again, as restless as her grandson. “I'll tell you about it someday when you're ready to listen.”

Remy doubted that moment would ever come.

“In the meantime,” Lydia said, “I want you to understand something. Your mother has been through a great deal these last months. I don't want to see her hurt any more. Do what you can to prevent it.”

Remy glared at her grandmother. “You're worried about her but not about me? Fine. I can take care of myself.”

“You still need your mother, and she needs you. Don't shut her out.”

Before Remy could say anything the golden retriever next door began to howl. Lydia leaned forward and peered out the window. “The moving truck is here. Time to finish up.”

Remy wanted to scream, but she was sure if she did, no one would hear her.

 

By the time the movers left, Faith felt like an item the men had flattened in transit. By the time evening approached, her head throbbed and her back ached from moving boxes and unpacking essentials. Had she been childless, she would have made her bed and crawled under the covers.

But she wasn't. “Who's up for pizza?” She stood in the hallway between Alex and Remy's bedrooms. She'd pumped a liter of false cheer into her question, and the effort nearly finished her off.

Alex opened his and stuck his head through the doorway. “Pepperoni?”

“Any kind you want. We're celebrating.”

“Remy hates pepperoni.”

“Remy can have something else.” When her daughter appeared, Faith informed her they were going out as a family and no protests were allowed.

They waited until a sullen Remy put on her sneakers, then locked up and started toward Wisconsin. Faith wasn't sure where they were going. She just wanted to get away from boxes and peeling wallpaper. On Wisconsin she took a right toward M Street, where there were dozens of restaurants. On M Faith selected a bistro that looked less like a bar than some of its neighbors and ordered a vegetarian pizza for Remy and a pepperoni for Alex. She ordered a salad for herself, which she picked at once it arrived, too tired to eat.

Remy hadn't said a word since leaving the house, and Alex fell silent in the middle of his second slice, worn down by the day's events. Faith didn't know what to say, either. She wanted to talk to them about David's visit and the need for forgiveness. But at the moment she had no forgiveness in her soul. She was one hundred percent exhausted, with no room to spare for the man who was the cause of it.

Instead of talking, she watched her children. The bistro was cheap enough to attract a wide variety of diners. Students made up about half the population, but the rest was decidedly mixed. The four corners of the world were well represented. A Sikh family in traditional clothing sat at the next table, and their small, dark-eyed daughter gaped at Alex as if she had never seen red hair. Just beyond them, half a dozen young adults from Southeast Asia laughed and spoke in their native language, and beyond
them,
an African-American couple, obviously on a date, were killing a bottle of wine and a platter of calamari with their heads close together and eyes focused on each other.

Alex was fascinated, but Remy seemed uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat, and her gaze swept the room as if she was afraid to let it linger. Faith realized that she wasn't one hundred percent exhausted after all. There was still room for some percentage of shame. Despite living their entire lives just minutes from the capital, her relentlessly suburban children were acting like visitors to the National Zoo.

And she and David had let that happen, perhaps even encouraged it.

For the first time since their lives had been turned topsy-turvy, Faith saw glimmers of a silver lining.

 

When they got back home, the street lamps were on. Remy took a shower without being asked, and Alex took one under protest. Afterward they disappeared into their rooms, too exhausted to complain about the tepid water temperature.

In the kitchen, Faith tried unpacking boxes, but half a box later she realized she couldn't go on.

As one last gesture she opened a cabinet to put away the glasses she'd set on the counter and saw the bottle of Scotch Dottie Lee had given her. Dottie Lee claimed good Scotch made a person believe all things were possible. That sounded suspiciously like a prescription for what ailed Faith.

She stared at the bottle. Before David, in between living with her parents and marrying her husband, she had been a social drinker. A glass of wine with dinner. A mixed drink at parties. Budweiser at an Orioles game. Nevertheless, she had abandoned drinking without a qualm when David came into her life.

After all, they'd had their image to think about.

That struck her funny. Maybe because she was exhausted. Maybe because laughter was better than the alternative.

“Oh, David…” She shook her head as big gulps of laughter shook her. For a moment, just a moment, she wished he were there to share the joke.

The cap came off the Scotch without effort, and she poured an inch into a glass. She doubted that after fifteen years as a teetotaler she could handle it straight, so she compromised by turning on the faucet and letting the water run for a full minute. Then she stuck the glass under it and added another inch of liquid.

“Scotch and water. Hold the rocks 'til we have a refrigerator.” She held up the glass in toast, lifting it toward the ceiling. “To all the women who've lived here, and to my sister Hope, who should have.”

 

That small measure of contentment—along with a second helping of the eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich—helped her fall
asleep immediately. Although the windows were shut and the ancient air conditioner labored away, she was vaguely aware of noise in the street, students talking as they wandered toward Wisconsin or back home again, tires on pavement, laughter and, once, something that sounded like an argument.

Although it was a stark contrast to McLean, the noise was oddly comforting. The streets grew quieter as the deepest part of night descended, and she slept fitfully, waking once to find the lamplight tracing patterns among the faded cabbage roses of her wallpaper.

She had only just fallen asleep again when she felt the warmth of a body in her bed. Half-conscious, she thought it was David trying to shake her awake.

Then she realized where she was. She jerked upright, pulling the sheet to her breasts. “What—”

“Mom.” Alex sounded terrified. “Mom!”

She was awake now, jolted back to reality. “What?”

“Listen!”

She sat perfectly still until she heard a high-pitched keening, like an infant in sharp distress. She hoped she was still dreaming.

“Do you hear it?” Alex wiggled under her arm and laid his head on her shoulder. “Mom?”

Her door creaked. It was a D.C. summer night, hot and humid enough for tropical fish to flop merrily through the streets, but Faith's skin was as cold as January. A figure flew across the room and leapt on her bed, and Faith threw open her arms to let Remy into the circle.

“Mom, did you hear it?” Remy could barely choke out the words.

“Uh-huh.” Faith pulled them closer. “Can you tell where it's coming from?”

Two arms shot up, fingers pointed toward the ceiling.

Faith looked above her, at dark stains where plaster had cracked. “The attic?” She whispered, as they had.

The keening began again, and every nerve of her body vibrated in answer. The sound was clearly coming from somewhere above them.

“Is it Hope?” Alex sounded terrified. Apparently his interest in ghosts had vanished with the first cries.

“No, of course not.” Faith sounded more certain than she felt. She didn't believe in ghosts, never had, and didn't intend to make an exception. But at the moment, no other possibilities occurred to her.

“Then what?” Remy demanded. “You're the mom.”

“I'm the mom” was Faith's final response to every argument, and now it was coming back to haunt her. Haunt her. She closed her eyes. “I am, aren't I?”

“What are you going to do?” Remy demanded.

“Well, I guess I'm going to go up to the attic and give that noise a piece of my mind.”

Both children grabbed her arms. Alex whimpered. “No.”

“There's something perfectly natural and normal making noise up there, and if we don't find out what it is, we won't get any sleep.” Faith gently shook off both children.

“Let's call the police!” Alex grabbed her arm again.

“I would if I thought it was a burglar. It's not.”

Remy refused to move out of her way. “There are windows up there. You can see them from the street. Maybe somebody climbed in.”

Faith wished she had investigated the attic the way she had promised Alex. But there hadn't been time to do anything except cast out the worst of the trash to make sure there was room for storage. The movers knew more about the attic than she did.