Keeping Faith

by Jodi Picoult

  Dr. De Vries rubs at his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "That Faith is hearing something, and talking to someone. There's too much knowledge there, that's age-and situationally inappropriate, to chalk it up to a figment of her imagination. But it's not a physical illness, and it doesn't appear to be a mental one either." He glances at Dr. Keller. "With your permission, I'll ask Dr. Keller to present this case next week at a psychiatric symposium, to see if our colleagues might have some answers."

  Through the observation glass I watch Faith launch a Sky Dancer into the air. When it hits the fluorescent lights, she laughs and tries to do it again. "I don't know...I don't want her to be some kind of spectacle."

  "She won't be present, Mrs. White. And the case will be presented anonymously."

  "If you do this, will you figure out what the problem is?"

  Dr. De Vries and Dr. Keller exchange a look. "We hope so, Mrs. White," he says. "But it may not be something we can fix."

  FOUR

  There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

  --Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  September 27, 1999

  When Allen McManus is assigned to cover symposiums, he looks upon it as an extra six hours of sleep. From time to time enough highbrow doctors congregate at the Boston Harbor Hotel to warrant sending out a stringer from The Boston Globe. No matter that most of the time Allen McManus writes obituaries--he's the one who gets sent. Obviously his editor-in-chief realizes the connection: Most of these god-awful conferences are enough to bore a person to death.

  Allen slouches in the rear of the auditorium. He's already written down the name of the symposium, which he figures is enough for the two lines of type it deserves. He's ready to cover his face with his hat and take a nap. But then an attractive woman walks up to the podium. That sparks Allen's curiosity. After all, in spite of his profession, he's not dead yet. Most of the speakers at these symposiums are crusty old turds who remind him alternately of his father and the priest from his childhood in Southie who used to rap his knuckles when he didn't quite measure up as altar boy. He sits up, interested in his surroundings for the first time that day.

  The woman is slender and fine-boned, her no-nonsense hair sluiced behind her ears as she settles her notes on the podium. "Good morning, I'm Dr. Mary Keller." Allen watches her eyes flicker over her notes, hesitate. "Ladies and gentlemen," she says, "given the unorthodox subject I'm about to present, I'm not going to read my prepared paper. Instead I'd like to tell you about two case studies. The first is a current patient, seven years old, whose mother brought her in for treatment. The subject has developed an imaginary friend, one that she refers to as her God. The second case study occurred over thirty years ago." Dr. Keller tells of a child at parochial school, forced to kneel for long stretches as penitance. She talks of a day when this five-year-old felt something stir beside her, something warm and solid, only to turn and see nothing at all.

  "The question I place before you today is this," Dr. Keller says. "If there is no physical component to a delusion, if there is no diagnostic framework in which to fit the behaviors as a generally accepted mental illness, what are we left with as a diagnosis?"

  Allen can feel the doctors in the row before him subtly shifting. Holy cow, he thinks, guessing where she's headed. This woman is committing professional suicide.

  "If physical and mental illness is ruled out, is it within the realm of a psychiatrist to authenticate the behavior? To say that, possibly, the delusion is really a vision?" She slowly runs her eyes over the entire disbelieving audience. "The reason I am asking you this is that I know for a fact that at least one, if not both of these subjects, is telling the truth. I know this because the child kneeling in the chapel, and feeling...something indescribable...was me. And because thirty years later, in my own office with another child as a subject, I have felt it again."

  Allen McManus tears his eyes away from Dr. Keller, slips out the back of the auditorium, and places a call to his editor.

  At the departure gate Colin watches Jessica check their tickets for the hundredth time. She looks like any other business traveler, with her tailored suit and laptop case--she looks like Colin himself. To see her, no one would know that at the end of this ten-day sales conference in Las Vegas, she plans to get married in a drive-through church and gamble her way through a weeklong honeymoon.

  "Are you excited?" she purrs, leaning into him. "Because I am."

  "I, uh, need to hit the bathroom." Colin gives her a smile and walks off, ostensibly toward the men's room. He does not know how he feels about getting married in Las Vegas. Performed by a hack justice of the peace, with an Elvis impersonator serenading them and bargain bouquets available for five dollars a pop, it will be considerably different from his wedding to Mariah.

  It had been Jessica's idea. They were headed to Vegas anyway for the conference. "Besides"--she had laughed, rubbing her abdomen--"imagine the stories we can tell him."

  He wonders now if his marriage to Mariah might have lasted, had he married her at the Light of the Moon chapel in Vegas instead of at St. Thomas's in Virginia, with more pomp and circumstance than a royal wedding. If he'd been willing to do--what was it called? the hora!--or break a glass beneath his foot, if he hadn't just assumed that his way was the right way, maybe their differences wouldn't have been so pronounced. As it is, Colin blames himself for what happened to his ex-wife. He asked her to bend to his wishes so much that she actually broke.

  Instead of entering the men's room, Colin sits down in a narrow phone cubicle and calls his former home. "Mariah," he says when she answers.

  There is a moment's pause. "Colin." Even though he tries not to, he can hear the thread of delight wrapped around her voice. It makes him uncomfortable; it always has. Who in his right mind wants to be someone else's savior?

  Colin presses his forehead against the metal wall of the booth and tries to find the words for what he must say. "How's Faith's back?" he asks instead.

  "Much better. She's wearing shirts now."

  "Good."

  In the silence that follows, Colin suddenly remembers how uncomfortable Mariah once was with spaces in conversation. She'd rush into sentences, chatter about nothing, rather than sit through the delay. Yet here she is, close-mouthed, as if she is trying to hold in a secret just as much as he is.

  "You're okay?" she finally asks.

  "Yeah. Headed to Las Vegas for a conference."

  "Oh," she says softly, flatly, and he knows what she means with that one word: How is it your life has gone on? "I guess you're calling for Faith, then."

  "Is that...would it be okay?"

  "You're her father, Colin. Of course it's okay."

  There is a shuffle of static, and before Colin can say anything else to Mariah, Faith is on the line. "Hi, Daddy."

  "Hey, cupcake." He wraps the metal snake of the phone line around his arm. "I wanted to tell you I'm going away for a few weeks."

  "You always go away."

  It strikes Colin that she is right. With the amount of travel he does for his job, his memories of Faith--and presumably hers of him--almost always involve good-byes or reunions. "But I always miss you."

  "I miss you, too." Faith sniffs and hands the phone back to Mariah.

  "Sorry," she says. "She's a little unpredictable these days."

  "Well. It's understandable."

  "Sure."

  "She's just a kid."

  "I know. I'm sure she appreciates that you called."

  Colin marvels at how strange they both sound: Mariah's words had once rifled over him like a waves on the beach, continuous patter about dry-cleaning tickets and school conferences and sales at the grocery store that he never really listened to, never noticed, until they stopped and he saw with surprise that he was buried up to his neck in the sand of this marriage. He wonders how you can go in the blink of an eye from speaking words that are as thoughtlessly dropped as pocket change to this, where even the most benign
conversation wrings you dry.

  "So...was that all?" Mariah hesitates just the slightest moment before asking, "Or did you want to talk to me?"

  There are so many things to discuss: the wedding, how Mariah's faring, how odd it seems to be miles apart and still feel as if there is a high, deep wall he is peering around. "That was all," Colin says.

  September 29, 1999

  Ian pays three people just to read the newspapers from around major cities in the United States and Europe. Every morning at eight o'clock these assistants are expected to report to his office with two dubious mystical events. On a morning two weeks into his Grassroots AntiRevival Campaign, they sit in the tight quarters of the Winnebago. "All right, now." Ian turns to David, his youngest employee. "What did you dig up?"

  "Two-headed chicken and a seventy-five-year-old who gave birth."

  "Get out," scoffs Yvonne. "The record's that Florida woman."

  The story doesn't particularly move Ian either. "What have you got that's better?"

  "Crop circles in Iowa."

  "I don't want to get mixed up with that. Believing in God and believing in aliens are two completely different ruses. Wanda?"

  "There's a bizarre source of a light at the bottom of a Montana well."

  "Sounds like radioactive waste. Anything else?"

  "Well, as a matter of fact, yes. In Boston there was some excitement at a psychiatric symposium."

  Ian grins. "There's an oxymoron."

  "Yeah, I know. It seems some doctor tossed out the idea that if a delusion can't be disproved, it just might be real."

  "That's my kind of shrink. What delusion, exactly?"

  "The psychiatrist has a patient--a girl--who she thinks might be seeing God."

  Ian's body begins to hum. "Is that so? Who's the kid?"

  "I don't know. Psychiatrists don't release names at these symposiums. They're just 'the subject.'" Wanda fishes in her jeans pocket. "I did get the psychiatrist's name, though," she says, handing Ian a piece of paper.

  "Miz Mary Margaret Keller," Ian reads. "She couldn't disprove a delusion, huh? She's probably had the kid studied by fifty people just like her. What she needs is someone like me."

  When there is a knock on the door, Rabbi Weissman looks up from his books. Groaning, he realizes it's ten o'clock. Time for another counseling session with the Rothmans.

  For the briefest of moments he considers pretending that he's not there. There is nothing he dislikes more than sitting while the Rothmans sling insults at each other with such vitriolic force that he fears being caught in the crossfire. He understands the role of the rabbi when it comes to helping members of his congregation, but this? Marital therapy? The rabbi shakes his head. More like target practice.

  With a sigh, Rabbi Weissman fixes a smile on his face and opens the office door, momentarily stunned by the sight of Eve and Herb Rothman kissing in the hall.

  They break away with a flurry of embarrassed apologies. Rabbi Weissman watches with disbelief as the couple pulls the two armchairs closer together before sitting down. Surely this isn't the same man who last week called his wife a scheming cow bent on milking him of his hard-earned money. Surely this isn't the same woman who last week said that the next time her husband came home smelling like a harem she would slice off his baytsim in the middle of the night. "Well," he says, raising a questioning brow.

  Eve's fingers tighten on her husband's. "I know," she says shyly. "Isn't it wonderful?"

  "It's better than wonderful," Herb enthuses. "It's not that we don't love you, Rabbi, but Evie and I aren't going to be needing your services anymore."

  Rabbi Weissman smiles. "That's the kind of rejection I like. What brought this about?"

  "It was no one thing," Eve admits. "I just started feeling differently."

  "Me, too," Herb says.

  If the rabbi recalls correctly, he had to separate the couple like two prizefighters at the last meeting, to keep them from physically assaulting each other. The Rothmans talk for a few more minutes, then wish the rabbi well and leave the office. Rabbi Weissman stares after them, shaking his head. God has truly intervened. Even He would have laid down odds that the Rothman marriage was too far gone to fix.

  It certainly wasn't anything that he said--he would have clearly remembered a breakthrough in this case. He would have marked it down on a Post-it, left a note to himself on his calendar. But there's no record from last week in the datebook, nothing at all.

  There's just the time of their meeting, and recorded beneath it, at 11:00 A.M., the name of little Faith White.

  In the middle of the night Faith wakes up and curls her hands into fists. They hurt enough to make her whimper, just like the time Betsy Corcoran had dared her to hold on to the flagpole on the coldest day of last winter and her skin had nearly frozen right to the metal. She rolls over and stuffs her hands beneath her pillow, where the sheets are still cool.

  But that doesn't help either. She fidgets a little bit more, wondering if she ought to get up and pee now that she's awake or just sit here and wait for her hands to stop hurting. She doesn't want to go in to her mother yet. Once she'd gotten up in the middle of the night and her foot had felt like the size of a watermelon and all tingly, but her mother had said it was just pins and needles and to go back to bed. Even though there were no pins and needles on the floor, and when Faith had checked, there were none sticking out of the sole of her foot either.

  She rolls over again and sees her guard sitting on the edge of the bed. "My hands hurt," she whimpers, and lifts them for inspection.

  Her guard leans forward to look. "It will only hurt for a little while."

  That makes Faith feel better. It's like when she's hot and sick sometimes and her mother gives her the little pills that she knows will make her headache disappear. Faith watches her guard lift her left hand first, and then her right, and put a kiss right in the middle of each palm. Her lips are so warm that Faith jumps at first and pulls her hands back. When she looks down, she can see it: her guard's kiss printed on her skin in a red circle. Thinking it is lipstick, Faith tries to rub at it with her thumb, but it does not come off.

  Her guard carefully folds Faith's fingers shut, making a fist. Faith giggles; she likes the idea of holding fast to a kiss. "See how I love you?" her guard says, and Faith smiles all the way back to sleep.

  September 30, 1999

  It would be nice if Ian could say that his sixth sense for rooting out deception is what leads him directly to Faith White, but it is not true. Like any other master planner, he knows that the best way to stay informed is to keep a finger in every pot. So after Dr. Keller flatly refuses a meeting with him, he sets into motion Plan B.

  It takes a half hour to find a supply closet in the local hospital and to locate a pair of clean scrubs. Ten minutes to brief Yvonne with the pertinent information and watch her walk through the sliding glass hospital doors, dressed to blend in.

  She comes back fifteen minutes later, her face glowing. "I walked straight up to the scheduling nurse for MRIs and told her that Dr. Keller hadn't received the reports back on a seven-year-old patient. So she goes, 'Oh, Faith White?' and she looks it up in her computer and says they were sent out a week ago. Faith White," she repeats. "Just like that."

  But Ian has moved on. He's already running his finger down the long line of Whites in the phone book. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he calls the first name on the list. "Hello. I'm looking for Faith White's mother? Oh. My apologies."

  He does it twice more, with no success, and then reaches an answering machine: "You have reached Colin, Mariah, and Faith. Please leave a message."

  Ian circles the address and looks up at his employees. "Bingo."

  New Canaan is not an easy town to get around. With the exception of Main Street, which turns into the sturdier and more serviceable Route 4 on both ends, there is not much that stands out. The school, the police station, the hairdresser, the professional building, and the Donut King are the sentries t
hat let you know you're passing through New Canaan. But unless you know your way through the narrow lanes that run between cornfields or up winding paths that cut over Bear Mountain, you do not realize that you're missing the farmhouses and old Capes where the residents of New Canaan actually live.

  The members of the Order of the Great Passion mill in and around the Donut King. Tired and irritable from their cross-country trek from Sedona, they seem more driven to find the nearest restroom than a new Messiah--the original goal that brought them to New Canaan. Brother Heywood, their leader, walks across Main Street, looking over the stretch of land that belongs to a registered Holstein farm. New Canaan, he thinks. The land of milk and honey. But truth be told, he has no idea if he's led his flock to the right place. The Messiah might just as well be in New England, New York, New Brunswick. From his pocket he withdraws a set of runes and casts them into the dirt at his feet. He is rubbing one of the carved stones against his thumb when he is nearly suffocated by a blast of grit and dirt.

  The Winnebago that comes flying too fast around the corner sends Brother Heywood stumbling back. He gets to his feet and shades his eyes, trying to get the license-plate number--not that he plans to report it, having subscribed to a noninterventionist philosophy some years ago, but old habits die hard. However, his eye is drawn from the blue license plate to the brightly painted fireball emblazoned on the recreational vehicle's rear door.

  Brother Heywood stuffs his runes back into his caftan and from a second pocket quickly extracts a pair of folding binoculars.

  IAN FLETCHER, he reads. THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH.

  Well, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know the name Ian Fletcher. His face is on a billboard right on the outskirts of Sedona, and his show is syndicated to kingdom come. In a way Heywood's fancied himself like the teleatheist--willing to buck the system and face public ridicule all in the name of religion. Except that Brother Heywood's expectations for the final outcome are considerably different from Ian Fletcher's.

  Still, he knows what Fletcher does for a living, and he's heard about the antievangelical cross-country tour. There's only one reason he can think of that would make Ian Fletcher come to New Canaan, New Hampshire--and it means that the Order hasn't been on a joy-ride after all. Making sure no one is watching, Brother Heywood lifts the binoculars and mentally maps out the path to a distant white farmhouse, the place where the Winnebago finally comes to a stop.