Hope on the Inside Read online

  Beth scanned the application again, biting her lower lip as she read. “You were a FACS teacher? That’s the same as Home Ec, right?”

  “More or less. The curriculum has changed a lot.”

  “So why would you want to work here?”

  Hope was used to people spilling their guts to her, murmuring, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” and then going on and telling her a whole lot more. She got it. Happened all the time. But it wasn’t a reciprocal arrangement. Other people talked. Hope listened. But there was something about Beth’s eyes. She looked like she cared.

  Hope told her everything, way more than she intended. Halfway through, Beth waved to one of the baristas and asked him to make two mochas. Hope started to get up from her chair, embarrassed to have shared so much and taken up so much of Beth’s time. But Beth said not to worry, that she was happy for the chance to rest her feet, so Hope kept talking.

  When she was finished Beth said, “That really sucks. You really got a raw deal,” which wasn’t much in terms of advice but helped more than Beth knew.

  Hope just needed to hear somebody say it. Not because it changed anything, just to know she wasn’t wrong to feel that way.

  Hope blew her nose into a Starbucks napkin.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Beth said. “You’re entitled. I just wish there was—” She stopped abruptly and looked away just as suddenly, her sympathetic expression replaced by a blank, wide-eyed look. She reached for her phone. “Hang on a second.”

  “Why?”

  “Just hang on. I need to call my cousin,” Beth said, and punched some numbers on her phone. “Nancy? . . . Hey, it’s Beth. Remember that job you were telling me about? For the craft teacher?”

  Hope felt a flutter in her chest.

  Somebody was looking to hire a craft teacher? That would be perfect!

  Assuming the pay was decent. And the job came with benefits. Not too likely on either count, she reminded herself, trying to guard against disappointment.

  “Yes,” Beth said, continuing with her half of the conversation, bobbing her head in response to whatever it was her cousin was saying. “But they’re still accepting applications? . . . Oh. That many, huh? Wow.”

  Hope felt her stomach sink. Obviously, she wasn’t the only person who thought teaching crafts was a dream job.

  “Well, I’m sitting across from a lady I think would be perfect,” Beth said. “She used to teach Home Ec. . . . Exactly. That’s what I thought too.... Okay, I’ll tell her. Thanks, Nancy. Tell John I said hello. . . . Uh-huh. I’ll see you at Mimi’s on Sunday. Bye.”

  Beth ended the call and looked at Hope.

  “The job is still open. They’ll be taking applications for another week.”

  “But they’ve had a lot of response?”

  “Over two hundred applications so far,” Beth said, then clucked her tongue in response to Hope’s fallen expression. “Come on. Don’t get discouraged. Just because they’ve gotten a ton of applicants doesn’t mean they’ve gotten the right one—yet. Something tells me you might be just what they’re looking for.”

  Hope nodded, but more to be agreeable than from any real conviction. “Yes. But two hundred applications?”

  “I know. I was surprised too. It doesn’t pay any more than you’d make working here, but it has benefits, good ones. They’ve got to hire somebody. It might as well be you, right?

  “Anyway, it won’t hurt to try. All they can do is say no. But you’re going to have to get creative, find some way to make your résumé stand out from the rest. I mean, assuming you even want the job,” Beth said, reaching for her coffee cup.

  “Are you kidding?” Hope said, surprised that she could possibly doubt her interest. “I’d take it for the insurance alone, but teaching crafting is completely up my alley. Of course I want it.”

  Beth slurped the last drops of her mocha.

  “Well. Before you get too excited, let me tell you more about the job. You might change your mind after you find out who you’d be teaching. And where.”

  Chapter 9

  “Cut!”

  Liam chopped the air with his hand before lowering his camera. Hope made a sputtering sound.

  “Again? What’s wrong this time? The lighting? The angle?”

  Liam laid his camera down on Hazel’s kitchen counter next to a piece of navy blue fabric and thick white cotton thread, supplies for the sashiko embroidery project Hope was supposed to demonstrate. Assuming they ever got that far. After fourteen takes, Hope still hadn’t gotten through her introduction, let alone started teaching the project.

  “Lillabet was about to walk into the shot,” Liam said, plucking Hazel’s cat from off the counter and depositing her on the floor, “but that’s not why I stopped. It’s the emotion. There isn’t any. You’re not giving me anything, Mom. You’re not making me believe you.”

  “Oh, Liam, please.” All Hope had managed to do so far was say her name, alma mater, that she had taught for two years, and that she’d like to be considered for the craft teacher job in a women’s prison. “What’s not to believe?” she said, putting the pink index cards with her major talking points down on the counter. “Just keep the camera rolling and let me just get through this, all right?”

  “Mom,” Liam said, heaving a frustrated sigh, “the whole reason we’re filming your application is to help you stand out from the crowd, right? You’ve got to show them what’s special about you, the stuff that they can’t know just from reading your résumé—your passion, your commitment, who you are inside.”

  Liam pressed his hand to his heart for emphasis and Hope rolled her eyes at her darling and oh-so-dramatic youngest child.

  “I should never have bought you that camera for your tenth birthday. Huge mistake.”

  Liam took the shade off of a lamp he’d borrowed from Hazel’s bedroom, then started fussing with a makeshift reflector he’d created from cardboard and an entire roll of Hazel’s aluminum foil. When it was set, he walked back to the spot where he’d been filming, made his fingers into a frame, and stared through them.

  “Still don’t like it,” he announced, dropping his arms to his sides.

  “Honey, is it possible you’re overthinking this? We’re making a video, not an artistic statement.”

  “I make films, not videos. And films always make an artistic statement.”

  Liam inched the reflector closer to the lamp, paused to observe the effect, and then twisted his lips, clearly dissatisfied with the result.

  “The lighting in here is the worst. It’s like filming in a dungeon. Are you sure we can’t do this tomorrow, when we’re back at the condo? That would be ideal, all those windows, so much natural light.”

  “No,” Hope said, giving her head a firm shake. “I don’t want Dad to know about this.”

  “Well,” Liam said slowly and lifting his brows, the way people do when pointing out the obvious, “if you get the job you’ll have to tell him.”

  “Yes. But that’s a big if. Hundreds of people have applied for this job. If, by some miracle, they actually pick me then I’ll tell your dad about it. After all the drama over my last job, I don’t see any point in stirring the pot unless I have to.”

  Liam stopped fooling with the reflector and gave Hope a considering but slightly worried look.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  “Of course we’re okay. Your dad and I have been married for about a thousand years. Now and then, you have to expect some of those years to run through a rough patch. That’s all this is, a rough patch.”

  “You’re sure?” Liam asked. “Because I am too young and emotionally fragile to survive a broken home.”

  Hope laughed. “You don’t need to worry. Your dad and I have had our moments, but if I have anything to say about it, we’ll go to our graves married.”

  “Okay,” Liam said slowly. “But what if you don’t?”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Have any
thing to say about it.”

  “Liam, that’s not funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” he protested, touching Hope’s arm when she looked away. “I’m just saying, my friend Julie’s parents were married forever too. Then her father lost his job, just like Dad. Next thing you know, they ran out of money, lost their house, started fighting—”

  “We’re not fighting,” Hope said.

  “Yeah. I know,” Liam said. “You’re barely speaking; that’s even worse. That’s just fighting without words. You two are so mad you can’t even talk.”

  “Liam, I am not mad at your father. None of this is his fault.”

  “I didn’t say you were mad at each other, just that you were mad. Mad at life. Mad at how you did everything right and everything still turned out wrong. Mad at the people who effed you over,” he said, but somewhat more explicitly.

  “Watch it. You’re not too old to get your mouth washed out with soap.”

  “I’m just saying, if you two keep shutting yourselves off and each other out, it’s not going to end well.

  “Right now, Julie’s mom is in rehab for addiction to painkillers, court ordered because she missed a turn and drove her car through the front of a 7-Eleven. Her dad is in Malibu, shacked up with Julie’s best friend’s mom.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest again, the way he always did when he thought he was right. “That’s two families destroyed. So far. Julie’s thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend, a really nice guy, because she’s decided that men can’t be trusted and marriage is a sham.”

  Hope sighed. That was her Liam, always able to find the most dramatic, most extreme, most unlikely illustration. He was going to make a wonderful director.

  “Honey, I’m sorry for your friend and her family, but you don’t need to worry about us. I don’t even like to take aspirin, let alone prescription painkillers. And while we might have our moments, your father would never cheat on me, not in a million years. We’re just not those people.”

  “Mom, if there’s one thing that living in LA and studying film has taught me, it’s that under the right circumstances and enough pressure, anybody can be ‘those people.’”

  Hope frowned. “What are you trying to say? That I shouldn’t apply for this job? That I should sit in that sterile box with the great view, doing nothing and watching your father eat two loaves of bread every day?”

  Liam groaned and lolled his head backward. “Of course not. If that’s what I thought I wouldn’t have volunteered to film your résumé, would I? I think this is a really neat opportunity for you. But you and Dad need to talk and quit keeping secrets from each other. You should tell him what you’re up to, that’s all.”

  “Why?” she asked, throwing her hands out in frustration. “Why open a whole can of worms over a job that I’ve got next to zero chance of getting?”

  “Because you’re married,” he countered. “Because married people should share everything, the good, the bad, and all the stuff in between. Because that’s what you sign up for on the day you say, ‘I do.’ And do you know how I know this?”

  Hope took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, vanquished.

  “Because that’s what I told you,” she answered. “Because that’s what I said when I gave the toast at McKenzie and Zach’s wedding.”

  “Did you mean it? Or was it just something you said?”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. You’re right. After this, no more secrets.”

  “Good. But why wait?”

  “Liam,” Hope said, “I know you mean well, but I can’t handle one more thing right now. I don’t have the energy to argue with your dad about a job I didn’t get.”

  “But if you do get it?”

  “Then of course I’ll tell him. I’ll have to. But the chances of that happening—”

  “Are excellent,” he interrupted, picking up his camera and peering at Hope through the lens.

  “Yeah? What makes you think so?”

  He pushed the camera right up into Hope’s face, trying to make her laugh. Smiling, she turned her head away. More than any of her other children, Liam knew how to get around her. She couldn’t be mad at him even when she wanted to. At least, not for long.

  “Because,” Liam replied, “you are a very talented woman who gave birth to a very talented son who is going to use those talents to show those people at the prison how truly fabulous you are.”

  He lowered the camera and looked into her eyes. Hope could see he wasn’t joking anymore.

  “You ready for another take?”

  “Okay.”

  Liam placed the camera back on the tripod, then got two of Hazel’s dining room chairs and placed them near the camera.

  “No notes,” he said when Hope picked up the stack of pink index cards and started flipping through them. “We’re going to try something different this time. Take a seat,” he said, motioning toward one of the chairs. “Good. No, don’t look at the camera. Look at me. We’re just going to talk for a while.”

  “Talk? About what?”

  “About you. What’s the first thing you ever made? The first crafty thing?”

  Liam lowered himself into the other chair. Hope laughed nervously.

  “Liam, this is silly. Why don’t we just skip all the part with me talking and you just film me demonstrating the sashiko instead. Nobody cares about me; they just want to know if I can teach.”

  “Humor me,” he said, then leaned forward and propped his chin in his hand, the way he used to when he was little and Hope told him stories at bedtime. “Tell me about the first craft you ever made.”

  “The very first? It was an elephant.”

  Liam just sat there, waiting for her to go on. She felt ridiculous, wondering what he thought this was going to accomplish, and groaned to signal her reluctance. But he just sat there, looking at her, waiting.

  “It was a stuffed elephant made with pink and gray velveteen and two of those plastic googly eyes, the kind you glue on.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seven.”

  “Sounds like a pretty complicated project for a seven-year-old. Did somebody help you?”

  “Oh yes,” Hope said. “My mother. It was her idea.

  “We’d gone downtown to run some errands and I saw a plush stuffed elephant in the display window of a toy store. It was just like the one that MaryAnn Traynor had brought to school for show-and-tell. I was obsessed with it,” Hope said, shaking her head at the memory of her own foolishness.

  “I asked Mom to get it for me and she said no, that it was too expensive. It cost something like seven dollars, which was a lot of money back then. Even before I asked I knew we couldn’t afford it. But when my mother said no, I started crying and wouldn’t stop. I cried during the entire bus ride home.

  “It was ridiculous,” she said, still feeling that way after all these years. “I was acting like a brat. I’m sure Mom must have felt like giving me a good smack, but she didn’t. She just sat there, holding Hazel on her lap while the whole bus stared at us.

  “When we got to our stop, I started crying even harder. I was sure Mom was going to punish me when we got home. Instead, she took me into her studio.”

  Hope hadn’t thought about that day for a long time. But even now, after so many years, her mother’s studio was vivid in her mind, and the memory of it made her smile.

  “Studio” was a pretty elevated word for her mother’s little hideaway. The house was small, only two bedrooms. But Hope’s mother needed space for her sewing and crafts, so Hope’s father added a room by enclosing two sides of an old sleeping porch and insulating it—sort of. In winter, even with the space heater running, the room was like an icebox. Suddenly, even though none was present, Hope caught a whiff of coffee and saw herself standing at the door of the studio, saw her mother sitting at the sewing machine, wearing a pink parka with faux fur on the hood. She saw the old Folgers Coffee can in a corner, positioned to catch drips from the leaky
roof.

  It wasn’t a pretty space, or a large one, or particularly well organized. And since Hope’s mother was always in the middle of a project, normally it was a mess. Every flat surface, including the floor, would be littered with fabric, yarn, ribbons, thread, buttons, sequins, feathers, and glitter, stuff she picked up for next to nothing at garage sales and flea markets. Hope’s father always said his wife must have been part crow, because she was always scavenging shiny objects to bring back to the nest.

  Hope loved that room.

  Even as a little girl, she understood that her mother’s studio was her sanctuary, the room of one’s own that every woman needs. To Hope it was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of treasures and mysteries. Until the incident on the bus, she had never been allowed to enter.

  That day, her mother took her by the hand and led her inside.

  “She dug through a box,” Hope said, smiling even through the thickness in her throat, “pulled out a piece of pink velveteen, handed it to me, and said, ‘Hope, you need to make peace with the fact that life isn’t fair. Nobody gets everything they want or think they want. But the sooner you learn to make the most of what you have, the happier you’ll be.’

  “Then she shoved a pile of stuff off the table, took out a piece of butcher paper, and sketched out an elephant pattern. I took over from there. Mom stood over me while I worked, showed me how to thread the sewing machine, and made sure I didn’t cut myself with the scissors. But I did about ninety percent of that project on my own.

  “I called my elephant Pamela, Pamela Pachyderm,” Hope said, smiling, still foolishly pleased with the name. “I took her to school for show-and-tell and told everybody that I’d made her myself.

  “I was shy as a child and never more than average academically, but I’ll never forget that day. Everybody made such a fuss, my teacher especially. It was like they’d noticed me for the first time, as if they’d looked around and suddenly realized I’d been there all along. Strange as it sounds, in some ways it felt like the first time I’d noticed myself as well, realized that I had something to offer and the ability to steer my own ship. . . .”

  Hope’s voice trailed off as she thought about that moment and how the lessons of childhood leave their mark.