Prospect Street (6 page)

David couldn't answer. There were no words to describe it.

“I will see that you never work at anything meaningful again,” Joe said. “That you never have the tiniest bit of influence. That you are never called on for an opinion, even a passing thought. No persons of faith will want you within ten miles of their churches. Even the mainline denominations don't know what to do with your kind, David, much less the religious right.”

“Does this give you pleasure, Joe?”

“You had the world at your fingertips, and you threw it away. For what? Another man? A Jew and a reporter, at that! And you brought my daughter down with you. You'll never be forgiven.”

David faced him. “For what? For hurting your daughter or for damaging your career? Isn't that where all this self-righteous fury's coming from? This has been tough to explain. You were grooming me to replace you, even though I always told you I wasn't interested. Now, suddenly, you have a gay son-in-law—”

“Not for long, I don't.”

“Well then, the father of your grandchildren is a gay man. That's not going to change with the divorce. Newt had to explain his lesbian sister. During your next campaign you'll have to explain me. And that's what's killing you. You didn't see it coming. You can't hide that.”

“Oh, I can explain about you, all right. You and your kind are everywhere. Hiding behind decent women. Sneaking into positions of power. I'll tell people even I was fooled, that they should look closer at everybody they know and root out the sinners!”

David was appalled. Joe's stance against homosexuality was well-known, but David had never heard this kind of hate-filled rhetoric from his father-in-law. “You've gone off the deep end. That could cost you an election, but maybe that's a good thing.”

“Stay away from my daughter, and stay away from my
grandchildren! If they need anything, I'll see that they're taken care of.”

“I will see my children,” David said. “Soon. There's not a court in this nation that will prevent that from happening. And I'll find a job and help support them. Meantime, I'd advise you to take a good look at Faith. She's determined to do this her way, and she isn't going to let either of us stop her. So ease up.”

“May I be struck dead on the day I take advice from you.”

Continuing was pointless. David left the senator gazing at the door that separated him from his daughter.

Out on the street, he opened the front door of Ham's sedan and slid into the passenger seat. He didn't speak.

“Are you going to leave the Accord parked on the road?” Ham asked.

David nodded.

“It didn't go well, did it?”

David glanced at him. Ham wore a tattered blue sports shirt and khaki shorts. He owned two ties, which he alternated when he had to, one sportscoat and an expensive tuxedo for the occasional White House dinner. His Dupont Circle apartment—which David shared—was furnished in Danish modern, contemporary art and whatever papers and books Ham dropped in piles on the floor.

Ham had announced he was gay in junior high school, lived through his parents' dismay and settled back into a loving relationship with them. The Steins had no qualms about David's sex, only that he was a Christian and a conservative.

David's heart still sped up whenever Ham caught his eye.

“It's never going to go well,” David said.

“Did you see your children?”

“I didn't even get inside.”

“You have the right to see them. If you continue to avoid it, the reunion's going to be even harder.” Ham started the engine and pulled out, turning around at the end of the cul-de-sac to get back to the main road.

David wondered if the day would ever come when he could
share his children's lives again, a day when he could even introduce them to Ham.

He remembered the expression on Joe Huston's face and knew that if the senator had anything to say about it, David himself would become a stranger.

“I'm going to arrange a visit.” David leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. “But I can guarantee they won't be ready for it.”

“You're in a tough position, David. I imagine they believe everything you told them all those years.”

David wondered how he had ever thought he had the right to tell anyone else how to live.

H
ating David would have been simplest, but the next morning, when Faith began to pack the Accord with cleaning supplies, gratitude was higher on the list. Despite what she'd said about saving on gas and insurance, having the Accord was going to make her life and the children's twice as easy.

“I don't see why I have to go.” Remy, in modest shorts and a T-shirt of the same blue-gray as her eyes, had been repeating the same sentence from the moment she'd discovered she was going to spend the day in Georgetown.

Faith was already tired, and the day had barely started. “When did I tell you that whining was a good way to get what you want?”

“I don't want to go there. I hate it!”

Faith lifted a box of clean rags into the trunk. “You'll hate it less when it's clean.”

Remy moved directly in front of her mother, just in case Faith hadn't gotten the point. “I'll never hate it less. I'll just hate you for making me live there.”

Faith snapped to attention. “Listen carefully, Remy. You're entitled to your feelings. I want you to be aware of them. I really do. But you won't take them out on me.”

“You don't care how I feel.”

“You're going to have to face facts. This is our best shot, and we're taking it. Now go inside and get Alex. We're leaving.”

Remy didn't have to go inside. Alex came flying out of the house. “Can I sit up front?”

“
I
don't want to, that's for sure.” Remy slid into the back seat and slammed the door hard enough to rock the car.

Alex took advantage of his sister's bad temper and chatted all the way into D.C. Faith realized how rare it was for Alex to be the child who was “in tune.” He seemed thrilled by the possibilities.

“Do you think there'll be any kids in the neighborhood?” He unlocked, then relocked, his door for the fifteenth time in as many minutes.

Faith crossed Key Bridge and turned uphill onto a side street that would take her to the house. “Just plenty of college kids, and maybe some politicians—who'll be too immature for you. But we'll have plenty of room for your friends to visit.”

“Like anybody would want to come,” Remy said.

Faith searched for parking. “Even though you don't want to live here, Georgetown's a major attraction. The shopping and restaurants are fabulous.”

“You can stop making it sound like fun.”

Since the tour guide routine wasn't working, Faith got down to business. “One of the things you have to do today is figure out which bedrooms you want. I'm taking the one at the front, so I can keep an eye on things. The other two are the same size. If you can't decide, we'll flip a coin.”

“I want the attic,” Alex reminded her.

“We'll check it out.”

In the rearview mirror Faith watched Remy roll her eyes. Scenes from
The Exorcist
had been filmed on Prospect Street. Faith wondered if there was a convenient priest who could rid
her
daughter of the bad spirits that seemed to have taken over her slender body.

They parked two blocks away, and Faith made a mental
note to get a residential parking permit. She unlocked the trunk and began to remove the boxes of cleaning supplies, handing one to Alex and another to a reluctant Remy.

“This isn't going to be fun,” she admitted, as they trudged toward the house. “We're just going to get the worst of it today. There's a crew coming in to refinish the floors next week. They'll be finished just in time for us to clean up again and move in.” Somewhere Lydia had found the money for the floors, insisting that the floors and broken slate on the roof were her duty.

Remy halted in front of the house. “I hope they plan to do more than that.”

“There's no time, but you'll be amazed how much better the place will look once we patch and paint. And once we put new appliances in the kitchen.”

“Can we bring our refrigerator?” Alex loved the side-by-side they had installed in the McLean house. He had nearly worn out the ice chute on the front door trying to figure out how it worked.

“Afraid not. It would take up the whole kitchen.”

“Don't worry, Alex.” Remy mimicked her mother's voice. “We can always eat at one of Georgetown's fabulous restaurants if our new refrigerator can't hold any food.”

Faith laughed, not the effect Remy had intended. “Listen, I've cooked so many meals in my life that eating out every night would be a dream come true.”

“You like to cook,” Alex said. “You like all that stuff.”

Faith wondered if that was true. She had never given cooking much thought. She'd simply seen three attractive and nutritious meals a day as her life's calling. “Well, I also like pizza, and once I start working, we'll be having it more often. Unless you guys learn to cook.”

She paused on the stoop. She wasn't even sure why, except that she'd seen movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and gazed at the house next door, where the old woman with the turban had been standing when they had come here with Lydia.

The woman was there again, dressed much the same, although this time her outfit was dazzling fuschia. Faith waved. Despite her mother's warning, this woman was going to be her neighbor. She introduced herself. “Hi, I'm Faith Bronson. And these are my children, Remy and Alex. We're moving in next week.”

“It's not fit for habitation. Your mother abandoned it to the contempt of strangers.”

Faith realized the woman must know who she was. “I'm afraid my mother didn't tell me your name.”

The woman disappeared. A moment later Faith heard the sound of the window closing.

Remy moved aside so her mother could unlock the door. “Oh great. Nutty neighbors, too.”

Faith couldn't help but smile. “I'll just bet there's a story there.”

Remy swept inside the moment the door was open. “Alex, you go next,” Faith said. “In case we have an infestation of dragons.”

She joined her brood of two after she locked the door behind her. They were standing together in the middle of the living room, staring at their new home. For a moment Faith gave in to the despair she saw in her daughter's eyes. She couldn't imagine the house as anything other than what it was right now. A filthy, dilapidated wreck, haunted by the ghosts of better times—and worse.

“Sometimes…” Faith knew she had to say something. “Sometimes you really have to see things at their worst to appreciate them at their best.”

Remy dropped the box of rags with a resounding thump. “Do you have a stupid saying for every occasion?” Before Faith could answer, Remy burst into tears and fled up the stairs.

Alex moved close enough that Faith could put her arm around his shoulders. “Remy doesn't know how to look at things and see what they can be,” he said. “That's what inventors do.”

“Uh-huh.” Faith fought back her own tears. “Do you think you could invent something fast to fix this place up?”

“It's already been invented.”

“Fire?”

He dug his elbow into her side. “Hard work. That's what you told us, remember?”

She took comfort in the fact that if she hadn't done anything else of worth in her life, she had given birth to this young man. “Let's get to it, shall we? We might as well start in the kitchen.”

“That's where Remy saw the rat.” He didn't sound worried.

“I called an exterminator this morning. He's coming sometime this century.”

“If I catch him first, can I put him in a cage in my room?”

“Not a chance.”

 

Remy didn't care which room Alex wanted. She chose the one in the back because it had windows. She'd need them to escape.

She couldn't believe her mother was going to make her live here. For months Remy had awakened every morning hoping she had dreamed this whole disaster. She was sure she would get up, go downstairs and find her father in a fresh white shirt, eating his traditional bowl of shredded wheat at the dining room table. She would kiss his cheek, and he would ask her how she'd slept.

Then he would go back to his newspaper, and she would find her mother in the kitchen baking cinnamon rolls or squeezing orange juice, like some old show on Nickelodeon. Her mom would tell her she looked nice in whatever color she was wearing and ask if she had any activities after school.

Remy wouldn't think twice about any of it. Because that was the way things were supposed to be. That was the way God meant for things to continue.

But she hadn't dreamed the bad things. They were real. This house was real. Her father's sin was real, and so was everything that had come afterward.

None of it was fair. She had lived a good life. She didn't smoke or swear. She studied when she needed to and made straight A's without half trying. The one time a friend stole a can of beer and asked her to share it, Remy told Faith. She wasn't messy, like Alex, and until this terrible thing with her father, she hadn't even been rude.

What was the point of all that goodness if things like this still happened? She couldn't think of one thing she had done wrong, or rather, the things she could think of, like locking Alex out of the house when her mother went grocery shopping, didn't seem big enough for something like this. She could only conclude that being good didn't really matter. Because other people could bring down the wrath of God. Right on your head.

She wondered, as she had for months, if she was being punished because she hadn't been a good enough daughter. If her father had loved her more or been prouder of her, wouldn't he have stayed out of Satan's grasp?

If her mother had been a better, more loving wife, wouldn't her father have stayed at home where he belonged?

She wished there was something to sit on, because she had no intention of cleaning, no matter what Faith said. She wandered the small space, wondering where she could put her things. She had dopey furniture. She'd picked it out when she was little and dopey herself. Now she tried to imagine how it would look in this awful, awful room. She didn't need a tape measure to figure out that the furniture was too large. Her bed might fit all right, because the ceiling was tall. But the dresser and chest that went with it would take up all the wall space. She was too old for the toys and dolls she kept on her special shelves, but she still needed a bookshelf and a desk, in case her new school required minimal reading skills and homework.

Remy wiped her eyes with the hem of her T-shirt. She had expected her mother to come up, but she could hear Faith and Alex talking downstairs. Sound carried through the empty rooms. She just bet Alex was taking advantage of this opportunity to make her look bad.

She kicked a wad of paper and sent it flying across the room to land at the edge of one of the mattresses. She followed it, kicking the mattress with her toe to see if anything was living in it. When nothing appeared she tried again. She walked to the end and shoved it out from the wall with her toes. Nothing emerged.

The mattresses stank, and she was going to be hiding out until lunchtime. She didn't want them here. She sure couldn't sit on them. She dragged them into the hallway, and when she returned to the room the cobwebs gave her the creeps. She didn't want spiders—or worse—falling on her when she walked around.

She went in search of rags and a broom.

 

By the time she had spent an hour cleaning, Faith had expanded her pizza fantasy to three meals a day. Even with new appliances, she couldn't imagine cooking in the kitchen. Shelves were missing in the closeout-sale cabinets. The sink was chipped, and the pipes under it leaked. Alex's rat friend had made a nest in one corner of the pantry, eating a portion of the electrical wiring leading toward the stove as an encore.

Alex joined her, and she straightened slowly after unsuccessfully trying to clean a stain off the most recent layer of vinyl flooring. “We need a list.”

Alex had been washing windows in the front of the house. He had contented himself by devising shortcuts. “What kind of list?”

“Of what needs to be done.”

“What's wrong with it?”

She shook her head. “Pretty much everything.”

“I like it.”

She wondered if he was just trying to make her feel better. She wasn't sure if she was ready yet for this poignant role reversal.

“The floor's still pretty yucky.” He went to a corner where nothing anchored the vinyl flooring and pried it loose with a
putty knife Faith had used to scrape off a wad of gum. “There's more floors under here.”

“I know.”

“What's at the bottom?”

She wasn't sure. She watched him tug back the vinyl and didn't stop him. Alex in exploration mode was at his best. “Anything interesting?”

“Just wood. Like the rest of the house.”

That was exactly what she'd hoped. “Terrific. We'll get the contractors to cart away the vinyl and refinish this floor, too.” She felt a little better.

“What else is wrong?”

“It needs everything. Wiring, plumbing, countertops, new cabinets.”

“What's wrong with these? Can't we paint them?” Alex thumped the side of the cabinet closest to the breakfast nook, which was a windowless space just large enough for a table. Beyond it were a closed-off stairwell and a small utility room, blocking any potential for a view.

She supposed a lumberyard could cut new shelves. “Maybe a nice coat of white paint—”

“White? Red!”

“Red cabinets?” She thought longingly of their Shaker-style kitchen in McLean, with its natural maple and vanilla Corian.

“It's not like anybody else's kitchen, and it's ours, right? So we get to pick.”

A pounding started at their front door. Faith wondered who had arrived and what bad news they'd brought with them. “Better let me get that.”