Keeping Faith

by Janice Macdonald

  “You had an abortion,” he said.

  “An abortion?” She blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your mother told me you had an abortion.”

  “My mother?” Incredulous, she gaped at him. “My mother told you I had an abortion?”

  “The day you told me you were pregnant,” he said, his voice devoid of inflection. “You were more than a bit upset about it. Something about being too young for the responsibility, as I recall. We had a fight and you left. When you didn’t come home that night, I went to see your mother. You’d gone away, she said, but she wouldn’t tell me where. The impression she gave me was that you were off having an abortion somewhere.”

  “My God, Liam. I…I can’t believe this. There was never any discussion about an abortion. Why would my mother tell you that?”

  “Obviously that’s a question you should ask her,” he said. Then he turned and walked back into the bar.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AFTER THE SHOW, there was a party at a big house on the beach. The friend of a friend of a friend. Liam stood out on the deck drinking a beer and watching the palm trees and the play of lights on the water while the festivities roared on in the lighted room behind him. The music had turned Paddywhack Irish, a great deal of whooping and diddly-diddly dooing. Mick, the Wild Rovers’ fiddler, had launched into “McNamara’s Band,” a tune he would never deign to play sober, and the accompanying clapping and foot stomping was so enthusiastic, Liam could feel the vibration under his feet.

  He had a daughter. He repeated the words to himself, trying to make them seem real. A daughter. And he didn’t even know her name. Hadn’t asked her name.

  “I have a daughter,” he told Brid when she came to see what he was doing out there all by himself.

  “God, they’re banging saucepan lids in there.” She cupped her hand around her ear. “You have a what?”

  “A daughter.”

  Brid looked at him for a moment, then disappeared and returned a moment later with a plate of carrots. With a nod, she directed him down to the far end of the deck, away from the noise. “All right, what’s this about?”

  “That girl I was talking to tonight.” He drank some beer. “We were married for about a year. She got pregnant, and I thought she’d had an abortion. Tonight she tells me that wasn’t so. Apparently, her mother lied to me.”

  Brid leaned her elbows on the railing, staring out at the water. “So this girl,” she said after a minute, “what’s her name?”

  “Hannah.” Actually, he’d always called her Hannie. Now he thought of her as Hannah. He eyed the plate of carrots. “You didn’t eat any of the barbecue stuff?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “The chicken had a sweet sauce all over it, and I don’t eat beef. So Hannah didn’t know what her mother was telling you?”

  “That’s what she claims.” He forced his mind away from Hannah and her news. “Brid, you’re worrying me with this food thing. There’s enough in there to feed an army. If you don’t like the chicken, find something else. Some bread or cheese or something.”

  “For God’s sake, Liam.” She tossed the carrot she’d picked up onto the sand. “What’s it to you what I eat? You’re getting on my nerves, always watching me.”

  “Who will, if I don’t? You’re not exactly doing much of a job yourself.”

  “I’m fine. Leave off, will you? I swear, you’re like the bloody food police.”

  Liam said nothing. Inside, they were singing “The Belle of Belfast City” and someone yelled for Brid to join them. She glanced over her shoulder but didn’t answer. Moments passed and then she put her arm around his shoulders, pressed him close.

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. She was a grown woman and it wasn’t his role to watch over her, but he couldn’t help how he felt.

  “Do you believe that she didn’t know?” Brid asked.

  “I’m not sure.” His thoughts back on Hannah’s bombshell, he picked at a bit of peeling paint on the railing. “You’d have to know her family. When one of them sneezes, the others not only know about it, they’re there with hankies and cough mixture. Hannah was always close to them. I can’t believe she didn’t know all about her mother’s conversation with me.”

  “But she came to the club to see you,” Brid pointed out. “And she told you about your daughter. If she’d wanted you to think she’d had an abortion, why would she do that?”

  Liam looked at her. Brid had a point. On the other hand, if Hannah wasn’t in on it, why had she never tried to communicate with him? She’d never sent so much as a single picture. Nothing. A daughter—and he had no idea what she looked like.

  “It sounds to me as though the mother was trying to get rid of you,” Brid said. “Probably thought the abortion thing would do it.”

  He considered. It wasn’t hard to imagine Margaret’s thinking. The family—to put it mildly—had never been particularly fond of him. Being a musician was bad enough, being an Irish musician was worse. Easy enough to imagine their thinking. He would take Hannah back to Ireland, leave her barefoot and pregnant in an unheated shack while he traipsed off around the world drinking and womanizing. Maybe they’d thought rescuing her from him was their only option.

  “Did you love her?”

  He shrugged.

  “Come on, Liam. It’s me, Brid.”

  “I used to.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time.”

  She laughed. “You should see yourself. Furiously picking the paint off the wood because this whole thing makes you squirm, doesn’t it? Talking about feelings?”

  “‘Feelings,’” he sang, trying to distract her. There was nothing he hated more than rambling on about what was going on in his head. It was one of the things he and Hannah used to fight about. She was always trying to drag him into long, drawn-out talks. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she’d say. “Tell me you love me. Why is it so hard for you to say it?”

  He eased off another chip of paint, realized what he was doing and stopped. Hannah. He’d spent years hating her for what she’d done, or what he thought she’d done. Seeing her tonight was…he couldn’t believe it. She looked different…great, really. Enormous green eyes and a wee little face. He used to pull her leg about looking like a kitten. Now she looked all grown-up. The way you’d expect the mother of a six-year-old to look, he supposed.

  “What now, then?” Brid asked. “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still trying to get used to the idea I’m a father.”

  “Does she know about you? Your daughter, I mean?”

  “I’ve no idea what they’ve told her.”

  Brid lit a cigarette, waved out the match and tossed it onto the sand. “Want to know what I think you should do?”

  He grinned. “Have I a choice?”

  “No.” She spoke through a cloud of blue smoke. “If you’ve any sense, you’ll forget tonight ever happened. Getting involved will only cause trouble. The child’s here. You’re in Ireland. Music is your life. You spend half of it on the road and you know nothing at all about being a daddy.”

  “That’s your opinion, is it?”

  “It is. But from the look on your face, I’ve the feeling I might as well be talking to the wind. You’ll regret it though, Liam. I’m telling you. You’re not a daddy sort of fellow.”

  HANNAH STOOD OUTSIDE her mother’s bedroom, trying to tell from the sounds inside whether Margaret was sleeping. The house had been in darkness when she got home from Fiddler’s Green. A note from Margaret on the kitchen table said she’d dropped Faith off at a friend’s house for a slumber party. Hannah raised her hand to knock, then stopped. Back in her own room, she sat on the bed. Maybe she needed to sort things out in her own mind before she spoke to Margaret.

  Including why seeing Liam tonight made her want to run around locking windows and doors. She got up, went down to the kitchen and microwaved a cup of chamomile tea, carr
ied it up to her room and set it on the bedside table. Fully dressed, she lay down on the bed. Even in the familiar security of her room, she felt shaky and anxious, as though the stability of her life had been physically threatened.

  Jen had advised her to move out immediately. “Your mother lied to you, Hannah. She told Liam you’d had an abortion. There’s no way you can go on living there.”

  Most parents really only want to do what’s best for their children.

  However misguided their motives. How many times had she had to remind herself of that when dealing with the parents of her students? But she hadn’t been a child. How was she ever supposed to trust Margaret again? She picked up the phone to call Deb. Changed her mind and set it down. Swung her legs off the bed and wandered over to the window. Stared out at the dark night.

  The room overlooked the rose garden her father had started shortly after she was born. There were something like thirty or forty plants out there. He would mark special occasions with a new variety. She’d lost count of all the roses planted for her and Deb. A pink Tiffany when she graduated from high school, a yellow one whose name she could never remember when she got her degree from Cal State. Three or four, all white, to mark Faith’s various milestones.

  The only occasion never commemorated with roses was her marriage to Liam. When she’d asked her dad about it, he’d said something about poor-quality roses that year, but she knew the real reason.

  Liam. His music still played in her head, but the evening had already taken on a dreamlike quality. One minute he’d been there, close enough to touch. And then he was gone. Elusive as smoke.

  It had always been that way with Liam. She’d met him during a trip to Ireland, a birthday present from her parents. He’d been playing in a Galway club that she’d wandered into one evening. During a break in the session, he’d come over to talk to her. He’d quoted poetry, made her laugh, hummed songs in her ear. Looking back, she knew she’d fallen in love with him that night.

  Still, she’d left the club never expecting to see him again. The next morning her landlady had knocked on her door to say she had a caller. Barefoot, in a red tartan robe, she’d walked out to the top of the stairs. Liam stood at the foot, smiling in the pale sunlight, a bunch of daisies in his hand.

  On her last day in Ireland, the countryside had bloomed with hawthorn hedges and primrose and the air had smelled of mowed hay and turf smoke. They’d taken a boat to Clare Island and stayed until dark. On the beach, with the moon beaming down on them, they’d made love. Afterward she’d looked up at the crescent of a new moon, like a fairy tiara in the dark sky; watched the silvery light on Liam’s face. Felt the fine sand slip between her fingers.

  They’d kissed goodbye at the airport and, despite all his promises to stay in touch, she’d again had the feeling that this was it. That as magical and wonderful as the whole experience had seemed, it wasn’t quite real. Like trying to hold on to the memory of a dream. But, once more, Liam had surprised her. The day she’d opened the door to see him standing there had been as mind-blowing as opening the paper to see his picture. “Come with me,” he’d said.

  In a celebratory mood after a show one night, they’d driven to Las Vegas. The wedding chapel was so hideously tacky, they’d both dissolved into fits of laughter. As they walked back out into the garish night, Liam had dumped a bag of silver paper horseshoes on her head. Her father had been incensed. Margaret had cried for days, a mini nervous breakdown, according to Helen.

  After Liam went back to Ireland, the family quietly and efficiently fixed up the wreckage of her life. A family friend had taken care of the divorce. Helen had arranged the job at La Petite Ecole. The nursery, where Faith had slept until she was five, had been decorated by Margaret and her sisters who, when Faith decided she was too old for rainbows and kittens, had redecorated it to look like a tree house.

  Liam’s name was seldom mentioned and, except for Faith, it sometimes seemed to Hannah that she’d dreamed the whole relationship.

  Until tonight. She got up from the bed, padded out into the hallway and tapped on her mother’s door. Nothing. She started to knock again, then stopped. It was nearly one. Margaret would be groggy. Better to wait.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Saturday, Hannah doubled her usual three-mile run. At the bottom of Termino, she glanced both ways at the traffic then sprinted across Livingstone Drive and Ocean Boulevard, past La Petite Ecole, around the end of the pier and the new Belmont Shore Brewery with its ocean-view patio; down along the footpath that paralleled the edge of the beach.

  She’d started running soon after Faith was born, and her route never varied. A sprint along the beach then up the slope that led to the art museum on Ocean Boulevard, twice around Bixby Park where, as kids, she and Debra had been taken by their parents to hear Sunday afternoon concerts on the grass, then back down the slope for the return trip.

  Helen and Rose had given her an expensive headset for her last birthday so that she could listen to music while she ran. She’d used it a couple of times, but preferred the natural fugue of ocean sounds: the steady crash of the waves, the screeches and coos of gulls and pigeons and the slap of her feet on the asphalt.

  These morning runs were hers alone, a time to think. Anything, from musings on what she’d eat for lunch to more profound matters such as whether she really wanted to spend the rest of her life teaching overprivileged and precocious four-year-olds.

  This morning, her thoughts were dominated by Liam.

  When she jogged up Termino twenty minutes later, she could see her mother outside the house, down on her knees, using a trowel to dig around the bird-of-paradise plants along the steps leading up to the front door. Margaret saw her and leaned back on her heels, trowel in hand.

  “Damn nasturtiums, they run wild.” Margaret gestured with the trowel at the offending pale green tendrils. “Every year I pull them all out, and every year they come back more than before. God knows why your father ever planted them in the first place.”

  Panting from her run, Hannah looked at the pile of orange calendulas and green nasturtium leaves her mother had yanked out. Neither plant, in Margaret’s opinion, was in keeping with the Spanish architectural style of the house and she waged an ongoing and futile battle to eradicate them. Hannah bent and picked half a dozen blooms. “We need to talk, Mom,” she said.

  Still on her knees, Margaret glanced up. “Debra called this morning. I guess you know she’s pregnant.”

  Hannah nodded. Dennis had refused to put Deb on the phone when Hannah called earlier.

  “Now she’s saying Dennis doesn’t want her to have the baby. She’s come back here with her suitcases.” Margaret gathered up the discarded plants and dumped them into the trash can at the side of the house. She ran her hands down the sides of her sweats, brushed the back of her arm across her face. “I don’t think she has the vaguest notion of what she really wants—”

  “Mom, I don’t want to talk about Debra right now.”

  Margaret eyed her warily.

  “I saw Liam last night.” Arms folded across her chest, she looked at her mother. Margaret’s face was unreadable, her eyes hidden by the baseball cap she wore, but Hannah sensed that there was a battle brewing. “I don’t even know where to start,” she said.

  “Then don’t, okay?” Margaret’s stance mirrored Hannah’s, arms folded, feet slightly apart. “I’ve got enough on my mind with Debra. I don’t need you giving me a hard time about something that happened years ago.”

  Hannah stared at her mother, incredulous.

  “I know for sure I’m not paying for her to have an abortion,” Margaret said, “but she’s so headstrong, I don’t even want to think what she might try. Rose and Helen are in there talking to her now. I had to come outside, I couldn’t listen to her anymore. This is my grandchild she’s casually talking about destroying.”

  “For God’s sake, Mom. This isn’t about you. It’s about Debra and what she needs to do for herself.” Hannah took some deep breat
hs. Debra could fight her own battles. “You lied to Liam.”

  Margaret looked at her for a moment. “You know what, Hannah? I don’t intend to discuss this with you. I’ve got enough on my mind.” She started for the house. “Helen put a coffee cake in the oven and it’s probably done now. It’s a new recipe she clipped from the Times. You mix up sour cream and—”

  “Damn it.” Hannah grabbed her mother’s arm. “You are not just walking off. I want some answers.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s really wrong?” Margaret jerked her arm from Hannah’s grasp. “I’ve never seen you so worked up.”

  “You told Liam I’d had an abortion, Mom. That’s what’s really wrong. Do you even realize the consequences of what you did? By lying to him—”

  “Okay, Hannah, we’ve covered the lying issue. Let’s talk about the consequences of your going to see him last night. Let’s talk about the fact that he now wants to take Faith back to Ireland.”

  “What?”

  “He called this morning while you were running.”

  “He said he was taking Faith back to Ireland?”

  “Not in so many words. He said he wants to talk to you. But it’s like Rose was saying, he’s a troublemaker. If he tries to get Faith… Well, Helen gave me the name of an attorney who specializes in this sort of thing. When you’ve calmed down a bit, we need to give him a call.”

  “Mom.” Hannah held her hands to her face for a moment, then took them away. “I don’t believe this, I just don’t believe it. You lied to Liam, deprived him of his daughter. Deprived Faith of her father and you’re talking about legal action?”

  Rose called from the kitchen, and Margaret glanced up at the house. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “Listen, Hannah…” Her voice broke, and she swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Don’t make me the enemy, okay? Any of us. Helen, Rose—”

  “So they were in on it, too?”

  “Don’t say it like that. We were out of our minds with worry about you. Your father, too, to the point that it killed him. Imagine how you’d feel if Faith’s life was in danger. Wouldn’t you do whatever it took to save her?”