Keepin' The Faith Read online

  The sister cleared her throat, and I was pretty sure that I saw a hint of pink adorn her face before she began to speak. “Miss DiNatale, Joelle was giving these out to classmates as friendship bracelets.”

  “Aww…well, that’s so sweet!”

  “Miss DiNatale! These are not bracelets!” Her voice rose.

  “Well, then what are they?” I was going to hell. I was going to hell. I was lying right to Sister Antoinette’s face with the Blessed Mother sitting behind her glaring at me. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but I could have sworn the sweet, calming demeanor on that statue’s face had changed to a displeasured glare. God, this place made me nuts! Maybe there was something in the ventilation system here that immediately caused you to emit that Catholic guilt.

  Mr. Geek cleared his throat and finally spoke, “Miss DiNatale, they are used when one has sexual relations.”

  His wife closed her eyes, turning a bright shade of red. Apparently the word sex in a sentence caused her to gain the much needed color she was lacking. Of all the damn kids in this school, why the hell did their kid have to be the one Joey gave one of these to?

  I covered my mouth and let out a gasp, hoping I was believable. “Oh my! I mean...how is that even possible?”

  The color of his face now matched his wife’s. “I’m not going to get into the details. It’s just not something five-year-old children should have access to.”

  “Oh no, I completely agree. I never even knew such a thing existed. She must have gotten them when she was over at her father’s house.” Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…it’s been two seconds since my last lie.

  They both stared at me dumbfounded.

  “Joey’s father and I aren’t together.” Another reason why I should be excommunicated from this school.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you were divorced,” Molly’s mother began to pry.

  That was it. I was done with this charade. I would stick with the lie about the cock ring, but I wasn’t going to lie about who I was. I got pregnant out of wedlock at a young age. So what? It happens all the time and I wouldn’t allow anyone to judge me for that. I knew I was a good mother and that was all that mattered.

  “We’re not divorced. We were never married.”

  Sister Antoinette looked down at her desk. This was the secret that wasn’t supposed to get out. After all, I had been told a million times by my mother about how the monsignor, who she and my father were good friends with, had pulled some strings just to allow Joey to be baptized in a Catholic church because of the fact that she was born out of wedlock. Then he pulled those same strings to enable her to become a student here. Imagine that? My innocent daughter was a disgrace to the school and church just because her parents weren’t married when she was born. Funny thing was, I could think of things that were way more disgraceful that were overlooked.

  “Oh-oh. I-I didn’t know that.” The woman looked away. I was waiting for her to hold up a crucifix to me. After all, I was an unwed mother of a daughter who handed out cock rings to her classmates.

  “Well, now you do. I’m sure her father must use these things all the time with his many girlfriends,” I embellished even more just to make everyone in the room feel as uncomfortable as they had just made me. It worked like a charm. Molly’s mother and Sister Antoinette were gasping in unison. “Now, if that’s all, I need to be heading back to work. I’ll talk to Joey tonight about this as well as her father.”

  Sister Antoinette remained straight-faced and nodded.

  “May I, Sister?” I asked, picking up the cock ring from her desk.

  “Yes, please get rid of that.” Repulsion washed over her face as if it were possessed.

  I turned my attention to Molly’s parents. “Did you guys want this?” I asked.

  “What? Oh no!” Mrs. Hutchins exclaimed, backing up in her chair when I took a step closer with it.

  “Okay, I just assumed that since your husband knew exactly what it was used for then maybe…sorry, my bad.”

  I walked out of that office embarrassed but also empowered for standing up for myself and essentially for my daughter, whom I was sure many individuals at this school would consider demon spawn because she wasn’t conceived in the manner that all Catholics are taught to believe. Honestly, these people really needed to get with the times. I could only hope that my mother didn’t get word of this at church or when she was helping out at the weekly church bingos. I would never hear the end of it. She never really came out and asked what type of products I sold in my side business, and I decided not to elaborate too much either. As far as she knew, it was just lingerie and even with that she raised an eyebrow. Throw dildos and cock rings into the mix and she would for sure be having a full-blown heart attack. She never got over the fact that I was nothing like my older sisters. They were perfect in her eyes. They were both married to nice Catholic boys, had the big wedding, and had their kids after they were married. I loved my sisters dearly and most of the time I viewed them as another mother instead of big sisters. I was glad that they both lived quite a distance away because whenever they would get together with my mother it was like hearing a lecture in stereo.

  My oldest sister married when I was only six years old, so it wasn’t like I even had any memory of living with her as a child. She lived in Connecticut and was married to a hotshot lawyer. They had a son and a daughter and it was hard to believe that my niece was already eighteen and just started her freshman year at Dartmouth. Guess that’s what happens when you follow the rules. You breed perfect children who are able to get into insanely prestigious colleges, not ones who hand out cock rings to their classmates. But I knew there were secrets that were masked underneath that perfect life my sister tried to portray. My niece, Jenna, who confided in me quite often, would tell me about her parents’ constant fighting because my sister thought her husband was fooling around. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he was. I always thought he was a little sleazy even though my parents believed he walked on water. Then there was my nephew, who my sister and mother portrayed as the perfect kid. Who, according to my niece, smoked more pot than Shaggy and Scooby combined. My sister would never admit to that. Even though it was something most kids would probably experience growing up…her kids would never! Or so she thought.

  My other sister lived in Virginia and was married to a doctor, of course. She was the stereotypical soccer mom, allowing her fourteen-year-old twin boys’ sporting activities to consume her life.

  I was definitely the black sheep and today had proven that even more. But I would much rather be considered the black sheep and live the way I wanted, instead of living a lie because I needed to depict the perfect life to everyone else. That was never who I was, and I didn’t intend to become that person now.

  As luck would have it, the mechanic called while I was in the principal’s office getting chastised. “Please don’t let it be the transmission, please don’t let it be the transmission,” I repeated over and over again as I waited for his voicemail to play.

  “Hey, Faith, it’s Tom. I got some bad news…it’s the transmission….”

  “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” I pounded on the steering wheel. Now what the hell was I going to do? I would be draining my savings to put into a fifteen-year-old car. I didn’t have time to think about that now. I had to get over to Sylvia’s to clean her house, and I was already late in doing so, thanks to my little unplanned meeting with the principal.

  I pulled up to the address written on the slip of paper Sylvia had given to me at the party. I couldn’t help but notice even though this was a cookie-cutter development of the same houses, there was something about Sylvia’s that stood out from the rest. That was confirmed when I stepped inside to the sleek, modern furnishings that adorned her entire home. She didn’t have floral or paisley patterned sofas with shag carpeting like the rest of my clients. She had ultramodern leather ones and pristine hardwood floors.

  “Welcome to my abode!” she bellowed with a cigar
ette in her hand. “Sorry, I don’t usually smoke in here, but I don’t feel like standing outside in the rain. Feels like the temperature dropped too. Guess autumn is finally among us.”

  I looked around her house, trying to figure out exactly what needed cleaning. From what I could gather, her place looked spotless. “Excuse me, Sylvia, your house is immaculate. As much as I could really use the business, I don’t want to just take your money for nothing.”

  “Honey, I clean every day. My OCD doesn’t allow me not to. But, I’ve got a bad back and I can’t move the couches to get behind them with the vacuum. So that’s where you come in, to do the heavy cleaning. Same goes in my bedroom. I like to vacuum under my bed once a week too. Oh and then there’s the blinds. I take them down every other week and give them a good cleaning as well…which is another thing I would need you to do. So, you see, there’s lots of cleaning to be done here.”

  “Oh…okay, if you say so.” There was no way I could charge her the normal price I charged clients whose houses I actually cleaned. “So, does twenty-five dollars sound fair?”

  “Twenty-five dollars? Delia said you charge her a hundred.”

  “Well, yes, I do, but I actually clean her house.”

  “Then you won’t be getting any less than a hundred from me as well.”

  “But, Sylvia, your house is already clean. I can’t—”

  “I insist…you have a daughter to take care of, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Then don’t argue about how much money you’re going to take from me. Kids cost money…lots of it.”

  I let out an exhausted breath. There was no way I was going to win this fight. In the short time I’d known her I had gathered she was headstrong and used to getting her way.

  “Okay, I’m just going out to my car to grab my things, and then I’ll get started in the bedroom.”

  “Wait a minute. Have you had lunch yet?”

  “No, I had to run to my daughter’s school and haven’t had time yet.”

  “So sit down with me and have some matzo ball soup. Have you ever had it?”

  I shook my head, and she motioned for me to take a seat at the kitchen table. I did as she said, feeling like a bit of a slacker for starting out my first day on the job, mooching lunch from my clients.

  She spooned the soup into the bowls and poured us each a glass of ice tea. “Oh, would you prefer hot tea instead?” she asked.

  “No, this is fine.” I waited for her to sit down before taking my first spoonful. “Oh my God, Sylvia, this is delicious!”

  “Thank you. So, I take it you’re not Jewish.”

  I shook my head, and she waved her hand in a dismissing manner.

  “Oh, well, you can’t have it all.” She chuckled as she eyed up the cross hanging around my neck. “Catholic?”

  “Yeah…” I sighed.

  “Don’t sound so down about it.” She laughed once again.

  “I just had a little run-in with one of the nuns at the school today.”

  “Ah! What happened? Did you put your feet on the kneeler?” she asked just as I was taking another spoonful of soup.

  I placed the napkin over my mouth, trying to hold back my laugher as I swallowed, remembering all the times I had gotten yelled at in church for doing just that. Come to think of it, that may have been a sin that the nuns led us to believe as well. “No, but it used to happen to me all the time! How would you know about that if you’re not Catholic?”

  “I grew up with a few Catholic girls and they would always tell me about how much trouble they would get in for doing that. I never understood why.”

  “Who knows? Believe me, I wish that were the reason I got called to her office today.”

  “What happened?”

  “It seems as if my five-year-old daughter got into my inventory of products for my part-time job and mistook a certain product that goes around the male anatomy as a bracelet and proceeded to hand them out to her little friends at school.”

  Sylvia roared with laughter. “She’s my kinda gal! I love it! So innocent.”

  “Yeah, it may have been innocent, but Sister Antoinette and the parents of one of the little girls that she gave one to didn’t think so.”

  “Ah, they need to lighten the hell up. She was being sweet handing out bracelets to her little friends.”

  I shook my head and couldn’t help but laugh. Sylvia was right. Despite the embarrassment, it wasn’t the end of the world. Joey’s heart was in the right place.

  After lunch, I headed into Sylvia’s bedroom, coming up empty on my quest to find some dust. I moved her bed, dresser, and nightstands, making sure I got one hundred dollars’ worth of vacuuming in.

  Please don’t let this be any more bad news, I thought when I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number, so how bad could it be? At least I knew it wasn’t the school calling to say my daughter was handing out dildos.

  “Hello?” My voice strained as I pushed Sylvia’s nightstand back into place.

  “Hi, is this Faith DiNatale?” the perky female on the other end asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Hi, Faith, I’m Regina Benson from GS Software Development.”

  GS Software Development. Why do I know the name of this company?

  “I’m calling to set up an interview for the administrative assistant position.”

  “I’m sorry, the what?”

  “You submitted your résumé for the opening we have…did you not?”

  Natalia! I was going to kill her! She had done my résumé for me last year when I had the harebrained idea of applying for a position at an advertising agency in Philadelphia, hoping they would overlook that I lacked the one thing they required—a four-year degree. I was impressed this company was even calling me. I didn’t have any viable experience for that position. Come to think of it, I didn’t have any experience for any type of meaningful job. Maybe I should go to the interview just for the experience. After all, Natalia did go through all of that work of sending out my résumé for me.

  “Oh...oh yes, I did. I’m sorry. I’ve just been getting so many calls for job interviews today that I must’ve gotten a little confused.” I was on a roll with the lies today, but maybe if they thought they had a little competition, they’d be more apt to hiring me.

  “Okay, great! Would you be able to make eleven o’clock on Monday?”

  “Yeah, sure. Eleven o’clock would be great!” What the hell was I thinking? The last time I’d been to a job interview, if you could even call it that, was back in high school when I got a job at Cluck-U Chicken. I was hired on the spot and lasted two days before I got tired of my hair and clothes reeking of fried chicken.

  She gave me directions, and we said our goodbyes.

  “Everything okay?” Sylvia asked as I stood in her bedroom rubbing my temples, wondering what I had just gotten myself into.

  “Oh yeah. I just”—I shook my head—“I just set up an interview for some job that I know I’ll never get and I don’t even really want. My best friend sent in my résumé because she thinks I need some stability and it will be an opportunity to meet new people. It’s just...I slept with my daughter’s father and she says he’s not good for me.” What the hell! What was I doing spilling my guts to this woman who was basically a stranger? But it felt cleansing to get if off my chest to someone other than Natalia. Someone who didn’t know the history between Cole and me. Someone who wouldn’t judge me for my actions…at least I hoped she wouldn’t.

  “Okay, so why is your friend telling you he’s not good for you?” She took a seat on her bed and tapped on the mattress for me to have a seat next to her.

  “He’s still in school. He keeps changing his major, so he isn’t much help financially where Joey’s concerned. But he helps out as much as he can, and he’s a great dad to her.”

  She nodded her head, and I was beginning to feel like I was in a therapy session. “Do you have feelings for hi
m?”

  “Well...um, I didn’t, but now that we’ve connected again, I kinda think I do.”

  “And, does he feel the same?”

  I let out a deep sigh. “I’m not sure. He just broke up with his girlfriend, but he’s always kind of had a reputation for being a player.”

  “And the sex is….”

  “Amazing.”

  “Well, honey, then you need to decide if you want to keep on having amazing sex and take a chance of getting your feelings squashed, or let him know how you’re feeling and lose the amazing sex. But, I think your friend is right, you should at least go for this interview. What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t get it? At least it will give you good experience for the next one.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” A weight lifted off my chest after unloading to her. This was like my adult confession, but instead of confessing to a priest, I was confessing to an old Jewish lady.

  “So where’s this interview at anyway?”

  “GS Software Developers.”

  She raised her eyebrow and a quick grin spread across her face. “I’m sure you’ll rock the interview.” She took my hand in hers and squeezed it tightly.

  Rock didn’t seem like the appropriate word. Bomb was more fitting.

  Chapter 5

  Gabe

  Nine o’clock and I was just heading home after working a fourteen-hour day. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night, but I wasn’t complaining. I had gotten a shitload accomplished today. We had finally worked out the kinks in the latest Valley of Death Game and it was ready to be sent out for beta testing. This was the most anticipated release yet and it had to be perfect before it was rolled out to the public next year.

  Was I a workaholic?

  Some might say that, but all of that hard work was paying off. At thirty years old, I was the owner of one of the most successful software companies in the world, developing some of the most popular and sought after video games and computer programs out there. My late nights at the office afforded me the brand-new Porsche I was driving, an upscale town house in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods around, and a pretty nice bank account.