Keeping Faith

by Janice Macdonald

  “Well, good. I’m glad you’ve got all this insight now that Liam’s safely out of the picture. Bottom line though, you prevailed. Congratulations, Mom, you managed to drive him away again.”

  AFTER THE SHOW, in the hot, noisy pub, amidst the happily rowdy crowd, Liam tried to shake the gloom that had descended upon him in the last week. It felt like wet, heavy concrete slowly oozing through his vital organs. Gray and viscous; smothering his brain, filling his lungs so that sometimes he had trouble taking a deep breath. Hardening around his heart.

  It had been a week now since he’d walked away from Hannah. A week of telling himself he’d done the right thing, that it was better for everyone, especially Faith, if he just bowed out. Better that she go on believing her daddy was in heaven than to have him let her down, disappoint her—as he almost surely would.

  A week in which he’d managed to convince himself that what Margaret had done had probably been a blessing in disguise. Without it, he’d have kept traveling along the path to a life with Hannah and Faith. The kind of life, he kept telling himself now, in which he would never have been really happy. And, in the process, he would have made Hannah and Faith unhappy. So, thank you, Margaret. He drank some beer. You did us all a favor.

  And things were not all bad. Brid was better. That was something to be thankful for. Or at least she’d assured him she was better. She’d worked out some sort of telephone counseling arrangement with her shrink at Casa Pacifica and claimed she was ready to go back on the road again. He’d taken her at her word and rescheduled the canceled performances.

  Tonight they’d played at a college campus in Santa Barbara. The show had gone well, despite teething problems with hired equipment and no sound check. A hard-core crowd of faithfuls had filled the front of the place and sung along with the music. Afterward, they’d all trooped down to an Irish bar at the end of the street. Brid was singing now, Pearse accompanying her on the tin whistle.

  Liam sat there, nursing his Guinness, telling himself this was the life. And wasn’t it? Hadn’t he always been happy with it? The music went from jig to reel while feet stomped on the wooden floor. The fiddle, the whistle, the drum like a heartbeat. Someone played pipes for a bit and then Brid grabbed the microphone again and the noise subsided as she began to sing. Something melancholy about desire and remorse; of being left behind, abandoned.

  He listened, transfixed until she was nearly through. And then he put down his glass and pushed his way through the crowd to the door.

  Outside, the night was cool and the streets were full of college kids in blue jeans. They spilled out of the taco shop across the road, congregated in groups on the sidewalk, laughing and talking and shouting out to one another. His face felt hot and flushed, and he stood with his back to the wall, trying to explain away the feeling that had come over him in the pub.

  “Are you all right, Liam?” Brid stood in the doorway, the pale, flimsy fabric of her dress blowing in the wind.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That song went well, can you hear them in there calling for more?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a girl in there asking about you.”

  “I’ll be in, give me a minute.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Leave off, Brid.” He pushed past her into the pub, but she caught his arm, pulled him against the wall and fixed him with a look. “What?”

  “What.” She clucked her tongue at him. “How long have we known each other? You’re a wreck.”

  “I’m fine. The show went fine.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  “I am,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  “We’re going to talk.”

  THEY WENT TO A DENNY’S a block or so away. He gawked at the plate of scrambled eggs and ham the waitress had set down in front of Brid and shook his head. “You go from one extreme to the other. You’re actually going to eat that?”

  “No, Liam, I’m going to fashion this—” she poked with her fork at the ham “—into a little hat and maybe I’ll use the eggs for a facial. Of course I’m going to eat it. And stop watching me, or I’ll dump it all on the floor.”

  Liam lifted the top of his bacon and avocado burger to verify the presence of avocado. Two slices. He couldn’t get enough of it. A few weeks from now, he’d be drooling at the memory of avocado. He glanced at Brid, who was busy segregating the pile of eggs from the ham. As a kid, he’d done the same thing with peas. God forbid that a small, shriveled, olive-green pea should come anywhere near his mashed potatoes.

  Did Faith do that? Did Faith ever ask about him? Did she ever pick up the guitar he’d given her? Did Hannah think of him? Across from him, Brid cut a tiny corner off a piece of ham. So far he’d seen nothing go in her mouth. She looked up and caught him watching her.

  “Pack it up, Liam. I mean it.”

  “So this therapist really said to call him anytime?”

  “He did.” Brid stared at Liam across the table. “His daughter died of anorexia, and he doesn’t want to see it happen to anyone else, if he can do anything about it.” She kept watching him. “Either that, or he wants my body.”

  “Skeletal as it is,” Liam said, and Brid reached over and slapped his hand. “Sorry,” he amended. “Fashionably slim.”

  “Not if I keep shoveling this stuff down.” Brid had now impaled ham on the tines of her fork and was studying it as though psyching herself up to actually put it in her mouth. She put the fork down and looked at Liam. “So?”

  He met her gaze. “So what?”

  “So what’s wrong with you?”

  “Me? Nothing.” She kept watching him. “Oh right,” he said, pretending to understand. “The chronic moodiness and flare for melodrama, you mean?”

  “No, that wasn’t what I meant, Liam. Although God knows, we’re all quite familiar with those qualities, thank you very much.”

  “Then I’ve no idea what you’re getting at.”

  “Haven’t you?” She carefully set her knife and fork on top of her uneaten food. “Right, then, I’m through.”

  “You hardly touched it.”

  “And I won’t. Until you tell me what’s making you behave like a lovesick cow.”

  “A cow?” He laughed around a mouthful of hamburger.

  “Talk.”

  “I don’t feel like talking about it, Brid.”

  “And I don’t feel like eating.”

  “I ended things with Hannah.” He set the hamburger back down. “I thought it was the right thing to do, but it’s killing me.”

  “You love her?”

  “I never stopped.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “I told her. And then…” He couldn’t bring himself to discuss the whole episode. “I changed my mind.” He pushed at her plate. “Still lots of food there.”

  Brid fixed him with a look. “You changed your mind? And is that what you told her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God.” She shook her head. “Men. The whole lot of you are scared to death to let anyone get close, so you tax your little brains trying to work out ways to stop it happening and then when it does, you wonder, all big-eyed and innocent, what went wrong and how you can make it better again.”

  “The male psyche according to Brid Kelly.”

  “So that’s really what you told her?” she asked. “Just that you changed your mind?”

  He shrugged. “Words to that effect. I kept trying to see myself in her world, a little suburban house, mowing the lawns on Saturday. What it came down to in the end was I couldn’t do it.” He frowned at his plate, at the lurid green pickle slices, the congealing grease. “And then her family was putting up a lot of resistance,” he admitted, still thinking about Margaret. Wondering as he had countless times since he’d left Hannah’s how it had all ended up. Wondering what reason Margaret had given for taking Faith, although that one wasn’t hard to guess. Wondering, too, how Hannah was coping. Thinking, as he had over and ov
er, of picking up the phone to call Hannah. To find out, to explain. Deciding, as he had over and over, that he needed to put it all behind him and move on. “It’s for the best,” he told Brid.

  “Right,” she said. “It’s written all over your face how happy you are about it all.”

  “I didn’t say I was happy about it. I said it was for the best. Hannah’s world isn’t mine. By the same token, I can hardly expect her and Faith to give up everything and live like gypsies, following the band around.” A waitress stopped at their table, looked at his plate, then up at him.

  “You all done with that, hon?”

  “I am.” He glanced at Brid’s plate, still some left but she’d made a dent in it. “I don’t know about her.”

  “Not quite.” Brid smiled at the waitress. “I’ll have some more coffee when you have a moment.” After the waitress left, Brid stuck her elbows on the table and propped her face between her hands. “We’ve had this discussion before,” she said. “Remember?”

  He frowned, sorting through all the advice he’d received since learning of Faith’s existence. Advice from Brid, from Miranda, from the guys in the band.

  “After your daughter’s birthday party?” Brid prompted. “I told you then, you need to make a choice. It’s one thing or the other. The kind of life you have now, or a different kind of life with a wife and daughter. There’s no way you can have both, Liam.”

  “I know.” The waitress brought coffee for Brid, smiled and set the check down on the table. Liam picked it up and studied it. “And I’ve made the choice. The next step is to convince myself I’m happy about it.”

  “BUT I HATE THIS PLACE, Mommy.” Faith lay in bed, tears streaming down her face. “It’s ugly and it smells funny and I miss Raisin. I want to go back to our old house. I want my bedroom and I want the tree-house bed.”

  Hannah sat down on the edge of the bed Liam had bought for his daughter, and tried to keep her voice and expression upbeat. In the week that they’d been in the new apartment, Faith’s bedtime had become a nightly ritual of tears. Several times, unable to console her daughter, Hannah had brought the little girl into her own bed, where Faith would finally fall asleep, snuggled up so close that Hannah hardly slept for fear of moving and waking her up again.

  “When can we go back to our house?”

  “Sweetie, this is our home now. The old house is Grandma’s.”

  “But I like that one better. I want that to be our house again.”

  “I know you do, but that’s because we haven’t lived here long enough for it to feel like our house.” She smoothed Faith’s hair. “Let’s think about some things we could do here to make it feel like our house.”

  Faith brightened. “We could bring Raisin here.”

  Hannah took a breath. “Besides bringing Raisin here. What are some other things we could do? Tell you what…” Her brain scrambled wildly to think of something that would fulfill the objective, not cost too much, not involve pets or painting the walls, which was also prohibited. Faith was waiting, her expression hopeful. “How about we make some new curtains,” Hannah said. “Red and blue to match your furniture.”

  Faith’s expression darkened. “Why can’t Raisin live here?”

  “Because he lives at Grandma’s house,” Hannah said. “But you can see him whenever we visit Grandma.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Well, maybe not tomorrow.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, sweetie, I promise.”

  “But when, Mommy? I miss Grandma and Auntie Rose and Auntie Helen. I want to go home.”

  This time, Hannah didn’t have the heart to correct her daughter. She leaned over to kiss Faith’s forehead. “Listen, you need to get some sleep. Mommy needs to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll get the material for the curtains, okay?”

  “I miss Grandma a whole lot,” Faith said. “But I miss Raisin the most.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AFTER SHE FINALLY GOT Faith to sleep, Hannah was too tensed up to sleep herself. She paced the tiny apartment, zeroing in on anything that would divert her thoughts from the endless playing and replaying of everything that had happened with Liam. In her bedroom, she hauled out all the clothes she’d initially jammed into the closets just to get them out of the way, and dumped them on the bed.

  Order. If she couldn’t impose a sense of order on her life, she was damn well going to whip her closet into shape. But as she segregated shirts and tops in color groups, further segregating them into casual and dress, she found herself thinking about Liam. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see anything good that had come from his brief involvement in their lives.

  She hadn’t seen or spoken to Margaret all week. She’d let the machine pick up all calls, and then ignored the red blinking message light. Each day after school, she took Faith to the park or beach, then stopped for a long, leisurely meal that didn’t end until she figured it was too late for Margaret to drop by. By that time, Faith was irritable and sleepy, which added guilt to everything else Hannah was feeling.

  But she’d been resolute: determined not to grant quick forgiveness, nor to slip back into the easy warmth of the family life. In the process, she’d also felt so lonely and bereft that she thought she would lose her mind.

  But things would improve. Liam hadn’t derailed her life. Not this time. He’d simply been an obstacle along the track. But she could circumvent it and move on. One small problem—she was no longer sure of her destination.

  Where had she been headed before Liam’s brief reappearance in her life? Continued employment at La Petite Ecole, coaching the Taylor Beckers of the world? Marriage, somewhere down the line, if not to Allan, to someone like Allan? A guy with comfortable, middle-class values, a guy who would feel entirely at home sitting around the family dinner table?

  Even now, she still saw her mother’s house when she thought about the family dinner table. Would there ever come a time when she’d think of herself and Faith as a family instead of a satellite in Margaret’s orbit?

  With the Goodwill bag full, she started sorting blue and green shirts, trying to decide whether each should have its own section, while also debating whether Liam had inadvertently done her a favor by making her question her destination. Deep in thought, she jumped, startled by a knock on the front door.

  It seemed late for visitors, but the clock by the bed showed that it was only a little after nine. In the living room, she stood on tiptoe to peer through the glass pane at the top of the door. Rose, Helen, Deb and Margaret stood huddled together outside shooting each other uncertain looks as they waited for her to respond to the knock.

  She opened the door.

  “Ta-da!” Rose held out her arms. “You might think you can shut us out of your life, but we’re here to tell you you’re wrong.”

  Hannah stood with one hand on the edge of the door, struggling to keep her face composed. Rose, Helen and Debra all held bulging plastic grocery sacks and shivered a little in the cool night air. And on the lower step, her face a mask of anxiety, stood Margaret. Hannah bit her lip hard, pulled back the door and they all trooped in.

  “Come on, Hanny.” Rose enveloped her in a hug. “Tell your old auntie you still love her.”

  “You’re going to be an auntie, remember?” Debra patted her still flat stomach. “Who do I talk to about morning sickness and stuff? Plus, it’s not fair that I have to be the focus of all Mom’s obsessive worrying.”

  “Now, Deb…” Margaret’s wavering smile flickered and she looked from one daughter to the other. “I’m trying, I really am.”

  Debra rolled her eyes.

  “Girls,” Helen said reprovingly. “Be nice to your mother.” She surveyed the tiny living room. “This is…a sweet little place. I think when you get it all fixed up, it’s going to be adorable. You know, you can actually staple sheets to the walls. I’ve seen some wonderful patterns and the beauty of it is you can take them all down when you move out.”

  “Grandma.” Fai
th, sleepy-eyed but smiling, burst into the room and flung herself into Margaret’s arms. “I miss you, Grandma.”

  And suddenly the apartment, which minutes earlier had been so silent, was full of voices and laughter. Helen called from the kitchen to announce that the freezer wasn’t working properly. Rose was saying that she’d finally persuaded Margaret to go to a singles dance, and Faith, still in her grandmother’s arms, was demanding to hear news about Raisin.

  “Omigod,” Rose, who was in the kitchen now, said loudly. “This fridge must be older than I am. It looks exactly like the one we had growing up. Hey, Margaret, come and look at this. Remember how we used to defrost it with the hair dryer?”

  “How big is Raisin now?” Faith asked Margaret. “When can we come home again?”

  Hannah exchanged a look with her mother. Margaret had her arms around Faith’s waist. Faith’s legs, pale under her scrunched-up red nightgown, were wrapped around Margaret’s hips. Faith would soon be too big for Margaret to pick up, Hannah thought. Tears stung her eyes and she turned away, busying herself straightening the miniblinds.

  In the kitchen, Helen was still talking about the antiquated freezer and how the artichoke, feta and chicken casserole would thaw and get spoiled. Deb made some joke about pickles and ice cream and Rose was inquiring about the possibility of a cold beer. Hannah turned from the window to catch Margaret dabbing at her eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” Margaret looked at Hannah over the top of Faith’s head. “I’m really, really sorry. God, I’ve missed you guys so much…”

  “I know, Mom.” Hannah swallowed. “We’ve missed you, too.”

  And she had.

  They drove her crazy, she thought a little later as they all sat around the kitchen table—her kitchen table—demolishing the pan of brownies Helen had brought, but her mother and aunts were so much a part of who she was that she could never really sever the ties completely. They might stretch and fray—even to the point of almost breaking—but, ultimately, the ties were strong enough to endure. The thought made her feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy for herself; sad for Liam whose ties to her and Faith were so fragile, he could relinquish them in an instant. His loss, she decided.