Keeping Faith

by Janice Macdonald

  “I told you I don’t have all the details worked out.”

  “Maybe you need to do that before you make a decision like this.”

  “Really?” Liam asked. “And what then? If you approve, I can be her father? But if not, the pirate’s dad gets the job? To hell with that.” He turned as though to go, then stopped. “Your family decided once that I wasn’t fit to be a father, they’re not going to bloody well do it again. I’ll be by tomorrow, about six. I want to see Faith before she goes to bed and then we’ll talk.”

  HER HEART THUNDERING so hard she felt sick to her stomach, Hannah watched the Mercedes peel up Termino and out of sight. As she pushed open the front door, she heard footsteps in the hallway and then Margaret was peering anxiously into her face. “Well?”

  “Well what, Mom?”

  “Well, how did it go?”

  “It went fine.” She pushed past her mother and headed for the stairs. All she wanted was to lie down on the bed and try to sort out her thoughts. Rose appeared from the kitchen. Rose and her mother were wearing matching purple fleecy robes trimmed with white piping. They’d seen them on sale at the May Company a month or so ago and, even though Margaret always sniffed that Rose had no taste when it came to clothes, both sisters liked the robes so much they’d each bought one. Rose had some sort of pale green mask on her face and her hair was pushed under a pink stretchy headband. Margaret’s hair was pulled up into an elastic and she was holding a glass of white wine.

  “Did he say anything?” Margaret asked.

  Hannah stopped halfway up the stairs, looked down at her mother and aunt. “Anything about what?”

  Rose grinned, sending bits of her mask fluttering to the floor. “Damn it, I need to get this stuff of my face.” She looked up at Hannah. “Your mother’s terrified, Hannah,” Rose said. “She thinks he’s going to take Faith back to Ireland,”

  “Well, it’s not exactly unheard-of, Rose.” Margaret’s voice was indignant. “Oprah had a show about parents who kidnap their own children. So don’t act as though it’s some outlandish thing I dreamed up.”

  “I tried to tell her.” Rose addressed Hannah. “But Ms. Gloom-and-Doom always thinks the worst. I told her, no way does that guy want to be a daddy. He’s a musician, for God’s sake.”

  “Musicians do have families, Rose.” Margaret looked at her sister as though she were talking to a slightly dimwitted child. “And he’s Irish, no less. The Irish are big on family. Next thing you know, Hannah will be pregnant again—”

  “And barefoot, Mom,” Hannah said. “Don’t forget about that. Barefoot, pregnant and living in a shanty.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” Margaret said. “I’m your mother. It wouldn’t be natural if I didn’t worry.” She took a sip of wine. “So when does he plan on trying to see her again?”

  Hannah watched her mother for a moment. “You know what, Mom? I think you need to lay off the wine a bit. I’m worried about your drinking.”

  AT SCHOOL the next morning, Jen threw a music magazine down on the table where Hannah was setting out little bottles of apple juice. “Rocky subscribes to it. Your boy’s got quite a photo spread,” she said. “Read the bit about the redhead.”

  Hannah’s eyes moved from the three pictures of Liam and Brid arranged around a center article. Liam playing a guitar, his face pensive. Liam, head bowed over a yellow notepad, a pencil in his mouth. Writing Songs, the caption read. The largest picture showed Liam on a city street somewhere. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket and stood slouched, unsmiling, against the plate-glass window of what looked like a nightclub. Visible inside, a stage with a microphone and band posters on the wall.

  Beside him, Brid, with her chin on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist. She looked tiny and insubstantial, lost inside a heavily zippered black jacket almost identical to Liam’s and, incongruously, a filmy white dress that came almost to her ankles. Just Good Friends, the caption read.

  Hannah looked at Jen, who shrugged. “So did you guys have a good time at the zoo yesterday?”

  “Yeah.” Unsettled now, Hannah forced herself to look away from the picture. We’re just good friends, Liam had said. Not that his relationship with his singer mattered to her, anyway. “Actually, it was pretty much Faith’s show,” she said. “She had a great time.”

  The kids started filing in for their snacks, and Hannah got very involved with handing out bottles of juice, aware of Jen watching her thoughtfully.

  “My mother’s a psychiatrist,” Morgan Montgomery announced as she took the juice from Hannah. “And she’s going to an important conference in San Francisco.”

  “Great,” Hannah said. Liam was also going to San Francisco. Maybe she should go, as well. Grab a quick session with Morgan Montgomery’s mother and see if they could figure out why she kept having these totally unrealistic delusions about Liam falling in love with her and quitting the band to buy a tract home in Orange County so he could be a part of Faith’s life without taking her off to Ireland.

  “Are you going to see him again?” Jen asked after the kids had filed back out to the playground.

  “Tonight.”

  Jen grinned. “Cool. And…?” She wagged her head from side to side. “Sparks?”

  “It’s not like that. He wants to see Faith.”

  “And that’s it? There’s nothing else going on?”

  “He wants to be…” She held up the first two fingers of each hand. “Quote, part of Faith’s life. That includes having her spend time with him in Ireland.”

  “God.” Jen’s smile faded. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’re going to talk about it tonight.”

  “How did your mom take that?”

  “She doesn’t know yet.”

  Jen shook her head. “Poor Hannah. I don’t know how you do it. If I lived with my mother, either I’d end up killing her or she’d kill me.”

  Hannah looked at Jen for a moment. “I think I need to move out.” Her face felt hot. Having said the words, it was as if she’d opened a box and released something that couldn’t be put back. “I need a place of my own. Me and Faith. It’s time.”

  “Because of all this…” Jen waved her hand at the magazine with Liam’s picture.

  “That and…” An image of Margaret and Rose in their purple robes waiting for her to come home flashed across her brain. “Just everything.”

  “CAN YOU BE READY in twenty minutes, Liam?” Miranda Payton’s blond head appeared around Liam’s bedroom door.

  “Sure.” Liam stood and stretched. The sky outside the window was the usual ceramic blue, and he could hear voices from the pool beneath his window. It sounded like Pearse. He set down the notebook he’d been using to jot lines for a song. His usual working position—crouched over the pages with the guitar lodged under one arm and a pen in the other hand. Spread over the floor were the pictures of Faith that Hannah had given him. Next to them, an old picture of Hannah he’d kept in his wallet.

  Miranda’s glance moved around the room; lighted on his guitar, the notebook, on a shirt he’d thrown over the back of a chair, lingered on the unmade bed and finally came to rest on the pictures on the floor. Liam waited for her to say something, but the silence lengthened, and finally she just looked at him and smiled.

  “I don’t mind driving up to L.A. if you’ve got something to do,” Liam said. In fact, he would rather go alone, but Miranda had offered and since he’d be using her car, he couldn’t think of a way to refuse without seeming rude. “I think I’ve got the hang of California motorways now.”

  “Freeways, Liam.” Miranda revealed her perfectly white teeth. She was wearing black. Trousers, skintight shirt and leather jacket. “Listen, cutie, there’s absolutely no way you can talk me out of going. I am so excited. I’ve never been inside a TV studio before.”

  “It’s not that exciting, Miranda.” Liam dug through his battered gig bag for the list of media interviews Joel, his manager, had lined up. An i
nterview with a reporter at a coffee shop on Sunset; a visit with a radio DJ who seemed quite enthusiastic about the band and a taping for a TV chat show. Not one of the big ones, according to Joel, but any exposure was better than none. “A load of blah-blah-blah,” Liam said with a grin at Miranda. “That’s what it really comes down to.”

  Miranda watched him for a moment. “That’s what you say, Liam. I think there’s much more to it than that.” She bent to pick up the pad he’d left on the floor. “What’s this? A new song?”

  “Yeah.” He reached for the notepad. “Let’s have it.”

  She pulled it away, out of his reach. “‘Faith,’” she read. “‘Faith, faith, faith. Hope. Hannah. Faith. Love.’”

  “Miranda.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Forget it.” He stuck the notepad in the bag. “I’ll go and see if Brid’s got herself together.”

  “Wait, Liam.” She caught his arm. “I’m sorry, really.”

  “It’s nothing. Drop it.”

  “Kind of personal, huh?”

  “I said drop it, Miranda. It’s nothing. Just words. Blah-blah-blah.”

  “MUSIC?” The landlord cocked his head slightly. “Yeah, I hear it. Thump, thump, thump. It’s the kid next door. I’ve told him to keep it down, the walls are too thin for that sort of thing. Other neighbors complain, but—” With a what-can-you-do-about-it shrug, he looked at Hannah. “What d’you think?”

  Hannah tried for something diplomatic to say. The duplex wasn’t quite what she’d envisioned. “I need to think about it,” she said.

  “Suit yourself,” the landlord said. “For what you want to pay, you’re not going to get a luxury condo at the beach.”

  True, but she’d hoped for something a little nicer. She followed him into a small hallway with scuffed hardwood floors. The faint smell of cigarette smoke and new paint filled her nose, and she tried to imagine bringing Faith home here. On either side of the hallway were two small bedrooms, painted stark white. Dusty, uncovered windows stared out like blank eyes onto the street. The largest room was half the size of the one Faith now slept in.

  She felt her throat clog with tears. In a little over two weeks, she’d gone from being comfortably secure in the center of a warm and loving family to feeling suspicious, alone and slightly adrift.

  “I’ve got three other people wanting to look at it,” the landlord called. “No skin off my nose if it’s not what you’re looking for.”

  “Just give me a minute.” She walked into the other bedroom and peered out the window. The view was uninspiring, but the window box could be filled with geranium cuttings. She turned from the window to look again at the room and thought about an ad for bed linens she’d seen in the latest Redbook.

  The picture was exactly the way she’d like her bedroom to look. Shades of taupe, cream and off-white; muslin curtains fluttering in the breeze and a bed piled high with fluffy pillows and comforters. And—not shown in the ad, but materializing now in her brain— Liam on the bed, pillows propped behind his head. Wearing nothing but a faint smile as he watched her undress.

  She slammed a door on the image. But took the place anyway.

  THE TV HOST, Rachel something or other, was a skinny redhead with enormous black-rimmed glasses, crimson lips and the longest fingernails Liam had ever seen in his life. More like talons really.

  He sat on a high stool on a set designed to look like a chic living room, listening to her describe his music as “a touch melancholy, but also joyous and uplifting.” Rachel sat opposite him on another stool, legs in sheer black stockings crossed at the ankles, her expression intense.

  Ten minutes into the interview, Rachel had started to get on his nerves, tossing out idiotic questions that had little to do with music. Brid would have answered some of them if she’d been there; idiotic questions didn’t bother Brid. But Brid hadn’t been in her room when he’d knocked that morning. Hadn’t been home last night when he’d got back from San Diego and, from her undisturbed bed, it appeared she hadn’t been home all night. Anxiety about her wasn’t doing much to improve Liam’s mood.

  “You’ve been quoted in the European press as saying you tend to live life on the edge.” The interviewer leaned closer. “What exactly did you mean by that?”

  “I suppose that I’m bored when things get too predictable.” He couldn’t actually remember having made the remark, but it was the way he felt sometimes. “Excitement, intensity, that sort of thing, make me feel alive. I’d be miserable going off to the same job every day, for instance. Coming home to the same house every night.” So how can you expect to be part of Faith’s life? Rachel was waiting for him to say more. He shrugged as if to say that topic was closed.

  Rachel consulted her notes for a moment, then reeled off highlights from the band’s history. “Your second release, ‘Betrayed,’ made the UK charts a few years back,” she said. “And you’ve got a new release set for later this year.” A quick glance at her notes. “August. And Wild Rovers fans in this country can catch you…”

  “In Santa Barbara next week, San Luis Obispo the next day, then San José and San Francisco.”

  “And then?”

  “And then back to Ireland to do an album and another European tour later this year.”

  Rachel smiled. “It doesn’t sound as though you’d have time to be bored.”

  “It’s the way I like it,” he said. I want to be a part of Faith’s life.

  Rachel leaned forward on her stool. “What would you have been, do you think, if you weren’t a musician?”

  Liam thought for a minute. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “An ambulance driver.”

  “Really?” She smiled at him. “And why is that?”

  “Danger,” Liam said, improvising because he really didn’t know why the hell he’d given her that answer. “Catastrophe. Physical risks. All that sort of thing. I thrive on it.”

  “Ah.” Rachel’s smile grew knowing. “A man who craves intensity and stimulation, who abhors the dullness and meaningless of a mundane existence.”

  “If you say so,” he said, glad now Brid wasn’t here listening to this rubbish. She’d have hooted him off the stool. Except that it wasn’t all rubbish. He thought of the guests at Faith’s party, grouped around the barbecue in their color-coordinated golf clothes. The joker in the apron and a chef’s hat. He’d die before he put on an apron. But he didn’t need an apron to be a father to his daughter.

  Rachel had another look at her notes. She held his glance for a moment before she asked the question. “You’ve been linked romantically with your lead singer, Brid Kelly.”

  He made eye contact with her. “I have.”

  “But you both deny there’s any truth to it.”

  Liam folded his arms across his chest. “Right.”

  “Right you’re linked romantically, or right there’s no truth to it.”

  “The latter,” Liam said.

  “And is there anyone in your life right now?”

  “There are a lot of people in my life right now.”

  “A special someone?”

  “I don’t discuss my personal life,” he said.

  HANNAH HAD GIVEN the landlord a check for first and last month’s rent and, on her way home, she stopped to pick up a few things she’d need for the new place. Her fantasies called for linens and dishes from the Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma, but her depleted checking account dictated Wal-Mart. Outside her mother’s house, she turned off the ignition, leaned her head against the back of the seat and tried to think. If she packed a little every night when she got home from school, she could move this weekend. Jen had offered Rocky’s truck and his help for the cost of a couple of six-packs and a pizza.

  First though, she had to get through this evening. Liam’s visit and—before or after, she hadn’t decided—the little matter of telling Margaret that she and Faith were moving out. Her brain couldn’t, wouldn’t, deal with Faith spending her summer vacations in Ireland. The prospect
was so unimaginable, it was easier not to think about it. Which was a little like trying to ignore an elephant in the living room. With a sigh, she opened the car door and started up the steps to the house.

  Faith greeted her in the hallway.

  “Grandma has a big surprise for you, Mommy.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “SHE DOES?” Hannah hauled Faith up into her arms, and grinned as her daughter’s legs wrapped around her. “God, you’re getting big,” she groaned, setting her down. Grandma’s big surprise for Faith yesterday had been an elaborate jungle gym, installed in the backyard while they were at the zoo. What Margaret’s latest surprise might be she had no idea and didn’t want to imagine. She nuzzled Faith’s neck. “I have a surprise for you, too.”

  Faith pulled away to look at her. “You do?”

  “Yep. Remember Liam? He went to the zoo with us yesterday? He’s coming to see you tonight.”

  “He is?” Faith jumped up and down. “Yay. I like Liam. Hey, Grandma.” She started up the stairs. “Guess who—”

  “Faith.” Hannah put her fingers to her lips. “Let’s not say anything right this minute, okay?”

  “How come?”

  “Just because.” Great. This from a teacher at La Petite Ecole? She drew a deep breath. “Where is everyone?”

  “Grandma’s upstairs working on your surprise and so is everyone else. I have to make you stay down here, because if you go up, you’ll ruin everything. Wait here, okay?”

  “Got it.” Hannah dropped her car keys onto the small wooden table by the front door, and leafed through the day’s stack of mail. After she and Liam broke up, she used to make daily pilgrimages to this table, frantically searching through the mail for a letter from him. He’d never written. Or maybe he had, she thought now.

  She sat on the bottom stair. A scent of baking apples wafted out from the kitchen, mingled with the Lemon Pledge polish her mother used. When her father was alive, the smoky vanilla smell of his pipe tobacco would drift through the house like a presence. Years from now, Lemon Pledge and pipe tobacco would still mean home. In her new place, she would use this organic polish she’d seen in Trader Joe’s. Beeswax, or something. In her home.