Keeping Faith

by Jodi Picoult

  On Thursday Mariah spends the morning watching the video Agnes of God, and so gets a late start food shopping. When she pulls up to the elementary school, ready to pick Faith up for the day, the trunk is full of groceries. The bell rings, and Mariah takes up her usual position, beside a large maple tree at the edge of the first-grade classroom pod, but Faith does not appear. She waits until the last of the children have dribbled out of the school, then walks into the office.

  Faith is huddled on the overstuffed purple couch beside the secretary's desk, crying, her leggings torn at the knees and her hair straggling out of its braid and sticking against her damp cheeks. She's stretched out her sleeves and hidden her fists inside them. She wipes her nose on the fabric. "Mommy, can I not go to school anymore?"

  Mariah feels her heart contract. "You love school," she says, dropping to her knees, as much to comfort Faith as to block the curious gaze of the school secretary. "What happened?"

  "They make fun of me. They say I'm crazy."

  Crazy. Filled with a righteous fury, Mariah slips an arm around her daughter. "Why would they say that?"

  Faith hunches her shoulders. "Because they heard me talk to...her."

  Mariah closes her eyes and makes a silent appeal--to whom?--to solve this, and fast. She pulls Faith upright and holds her mittened hand, tugging her out of the main office. "You know what? Maybe you can stay home from school, just for tomorrow. We can do things, you and me, all day."

  Faith turns her face up to her mother's. "For real?"

  Mariah nods. "I used to take special holidays sometimes with Grandma." Her jaw tightens as she remembers what her mother had called it: a mental-health day.

  They drive through the winding roads of New Canaan, Faith slowly beginning, in bits and pieces, to relay the school day to Mariah. At the turn to their driveway, Mariah rolls down the window and picks up the mail, marking the number of parked cars lining the road. Hikers, or birdwatchers, taking to the field across the road. They get that up here quite often. She continues to drive, and then she sees the crowd that surrounds the house.

  There are vans and cars, and for God's sake, a big painted Winnebago.

  "Wow," Faith breathes. "What's going on?"

  "I don't know," Mariah says tightly. She turns off the ignition and steps from the car into a throng of nearly twenty people. Immediately cameras begin flashing, and questions are hurled at her like javelins. "Is your daughter in the car?" "Is God with her?" "Do you see God, too?"

  When Faith's door cracks open, the questions stop. Mariah watches her daughter get out of the car and stand nervously on the slate path that leads up to the house. Lining it are a dozen men and women in caftans, who bow their heads as Faith looks at them. Standing behind, and slightly apart, is a man smoking a thin cigar. The face seems familiar to Mariah. With a start she realizes that she's seen him on TV--Ian Fletcher himself is leaning against her crab-apple tree.

  Suddenly Mariah knows exactly what is going on. Somehow, some way, people are beginning to hear about Faith. Feeling sick, she wraps an arm around her daughter's shoulders and steers her up the porch. She pulls Faith into the house with her and locks the door.

  "How come they're here?" Faith peeks out the sidelight and is yanked away by her mother before she can be seen.

  Mariah rubs her temples. "Go to your room. Do your homework."

  "I don't have any."

  "Then find some!" Mariah snaps. She walks into the kitchen and picks up the phone, tears already thickening her throat. She needs to call the police, but she dials a different number first. When her mother answers on the second ring, Mariah lets the first sob out. "Please come," she says, and she hangs up.

  She sits at the kitchen counter, her palms spread on the cool Formica. She counts to ten. She thinks of the milk and the peaches and the broccoli sitting in the trunk of her car, already beginning to rot.

  Ian Fletcher is very good at doing his job. He is ruthless, he is driven, he is single-minded. So he fixes his eyes on the little girl, this next subject of his, and watches her get out of the car.

  But his attention wanders to the woman beside Faith White. The look of fear on her face, her unconscious grace, the instinctive slip of her arm over her daughter--all draw Ian's eye. She is small and fine-boned, with hair the color of old gold. It is pulled back from her face, which is pale and free of makeup and quite possibly the most naturally lovely thing Ian has seen since climbing the falls in South America. She's not classically beautiful, not perfect, but somehow that only makes her more interesting. Ian shakes his head to clear it. He carouses with models and movie stars--he should not be swayed by a woman with the face of an angel.

  An angel? The very thought is traitorous, ludicrous. It's the goddamned Winnebago, he decides. Spending the night on a foam cot, instead of a deluxe hotel mattress, is aggravating his insomnia to the point where he can't think straight, to the point where anyone with a pair of X chromosomes becomes attractive.

  Ian focuses on Faith White, walking beneath her mother's arm. But then he makes the mistake of glancing up--and meets the gaze of Mariah White. Cool, green, angry. Let the battle begin, Ian thinks, unwilling and unable to look away until she firmly shuts the door.

  "Name one thing--other than the existence of God--that we take on blind faith," Ian challenges, his voice rising like a call to arms over the small group of people gathered to listen. News of Ian's presence has by now attracted a number of onlookers, in addition to several members of the press. "There's nothing! Not a single thing. Not even the sun rising every day. I know it's going to be there, but that's something I can prove scientifically."

  He leans against the railing of a wooden platform hastily erected beside the Winnebago for media moments like these. "Can I prove God is there? No."

  He watches people from the corner of his eye, whispering to each other, maybe even second-guessing what made them come to see this miraculous Faith White in the first place. "You know what faith is, what religion is?" He looks pointedly at the scarlet-suited members of the Order of the Great Passion, gathered close with scowls on their faces. "It's a cult. Who gives us religion? Our parents brainwash us when we're four or five and most receptive to fantastical ideas. We're told we have to believe in God, so we do."

  Ian raises a hand in the direction of the White farmhouse. "And now the word of a little girl who--I might add--is just at the right age to believe in fairies and goblins and the Easter Bunny as well--is enough to convince you?" He levels the crowd with a calculated gaze. "I ask all y'all again: What else do we believe in with blind faith?"

  At the profound silence, Ian grins. "Well, let me help you out. The last thing you believed in with absolute, unshakable conviction was...Santa Claus." He raises his brows. "No matter how impossible it seemed, no matter how much evidence to the contrary, when you were a child you wanted to believe, and so you did. And as rude as the comparison sounds, it's not all that different from believing in the existence of God. They both grant a boon based on whether you've been naughty or nice. They both go about their work without being seen. They rely heavily on the assistance of mythical creatures--elves in one case, angels in the other."

  Ian lets his eyes touch on one of the cult members, one local reporter, one mother clutching an infant. "So how come y'all don't believe in Santa nowadays? Well, because you grew up, and you realized how impossible the whole thing was. Santa Claus went from being a fact to being a real good story, one to pass on to your children. The same way your parents told you about God when you were a kid." He hesitates for a moment, letting the silence thicken. "Can't you see that God's a myth, too?"

  Millie Epstein slams her car door violently. Mariah's beautiful old farmhouse is flocked by lunatics, from what she can see. At least twenty people are milling around on the long driveway, some even bold enough to trample the grass edging the front porch. These include a handful wearing bizarre red nightgowns, a few curious locals, and two vans with television call letters spangled across their sid
es, complete with reporters. Millie shoves them all out of her way until she reaches the porch, where she finds the chief of police. "Thomas," she says. "What kind of circus is this?"

  The police chief shrugs. "Just got here myself, Mrs. Epstein. From what I can tell, based on the reporters over there, there's one group saying that your granddaughter is Jesus or something. Then there's another guy who's saying that not only is Faith not Jesus, but that Jesus doesn't exist."

  "Can't we get them off Mariah's lawn?"

  "I was just about to do that myself," he admits. "Course, I can only keep 'em as far back as the road. It's a public venue."

  Millie surveys the group. "Can we talk to Faith?" a reporter shouts. "Bring her out!"

  "Yeah!"

  "Bring out the mother, too!"

  The voices crescendo, and, horrified, all Millie can do is listen. Then she crosses her arms over her chest and stares out at the crowd. "This is private property; you don't belong here. And you're talking about a child. A child. Would you really take the word of a seven-year-old?"

  From the front of the crowd comes the sound of someone clapping, slowly, deliberately. "My congratulations, ma'am," Ian Fletcher drawls. "A rational statement, right in the middle of a maelstrom. Imagine that."

  He comes into Millie's line of vision, continuing to walk forward until she can see that it is Ian Fletcher, the one from the TV show, and that as handsome as he is and as mellifluous his voice, she knows that she's made a horrible error in judgment ever to have found him attractive. Millie's tossed the crowd a crumb of doubt, just so that they'll have something to feed on other than her granddaughter. But this man...this man scatters doubt in order to have them all eating out of the palm of his hand.

  "I suggest you leave," Millie says tightly. "My granddaughter is of no interest to you."

  Ian Fletcher flashes a smile. "Is that a fact? So you don't believe your own granddaughter? I guess you know that a child who says she's talking to God is just that...a child who says she's talking to God. No bells, no whistles, not even any miracles. Just a group of fawning cult members who are already three shades shy of reputability. But that's certainly not enough to create a frenzy over, is it now?"

  His words are honeyed; they run over Millie and root her to the porch. "Ma'am, you're a woman after my own heart."

  Millie narrows her eyes and opens her mouth and then, clutching her chest, falls to the ground at Ian's feet.

  Mariah throws open the front door and kneels over her mother. "Ma!" she cries, shaking Millie's slack shoulders. "Call an ambulance!"

  There are a few scattered camera flashes. Ignoring them, Mariah bends over Millie, leaning her ear close to her mother's mouth. But she feels no breath, no telltale stir of her hair. It's her heart, it's her heart, she knows it. She squeezes her mother's hand, certain that if she lets go just the tiniest bit, she will lose her.

  Moments later the ambulance roars up the driveway, spraying gravel, getting as close as it can given the melange of vans and news trucks and the Winnebago. The paramedics race up the porch stairs. One gently pulls Mariah out of the way and the other begins to do CPR.

  "Oh, God," Mariah whispers, her voice tiny. "Oh, God. God. Oh, my God."

  Oh, guard. Guard. Oh, my guard. From the hiding spot where she has been huddled since sneaking out of the house, Faith's head swings up. And her summons sounds so much like her mother's that for the first time she realizes what she's been saying all along.

  Ian watches Mariah White tearfully argue with the paramedics, who refuse to let Faith ride along in the ambulance. The chief of police intercedes, promising to bring her daughter down to the hospital as soon as backup arrives to get everyone off her property. With his hands in his pockets, he watches the ambulance roar out of the driveway.

  "Nice work."

  Ian startles at the voice and finds his executive producer holding out a set of car keys. "Here you go. You'll get network coverage tonight for sure."

  For badgering an old woman into cardiac arrest. "Well, now," Ian says. "Can't ask for much more'n that."

  "So what are you waiting for?"

  Ian clutches the keys. "Right," he says, falling quickly into James's expectations and looking around for the producer's BMW. He doesn't even bother calling for a cameraman, knowing they'll never be allowed to set foot in the hospital. "Don't go drag-racing my Winnebago," he shouts, then speeds off.

  In the ER waiting room he watches the fuzzy-reception TV, tuned to kiddie cartoons. There is no sign of Mariah White. Faith arrives ten minutes later in the company of a young policeman. They sit a few rows away, and every now and then she turns in her seat to stare at Ian.

  It's downright disconcerting. Ian hasn't got much of a conscience, so his work rarely puts him in a contemplative state of mind. After all, the people he usually upsets the most are the goddamned Southern Baptists, of which he was once one and who, in Ian's mind, are so busy swallowing their daily doses of Jesus that they need to come up choking on their self-righteousness from time to time. Once a woman fainted clear away in the middle of his Central Park speeches, but that isn't at all the same thing. Faith White's grandma--Ian doesn't even know her name--well, what happened happened partly because of something he'd said, something he'd done.

  It's a story, he tells himself. She's no one you know, and it's your story.

  The policeman's beeper goes off. He checks it, then turns to Faith and asks her to stay put. On his way to a bank of phones, the cop stops at the triage nurse's desk and speaks quietly, no doubt asking the woman to watch the kid for a minute.

  When Faith turns to stare at him again, Ian closes his eyes. Then he hears her small, thin voice. "Mister?"

  She is suddenly sitting beside him. "Hello," he says, after a moment.

  "Is my grandma dead?"

  "I don't know," Ian admits. She doesn't respond, and--curious--he glances down at her. Faith huddles against the armrest of the chair, brooding. He doesn't see someone touched by God. He sees a scared little girl.

  "So," he says, uncomfortably trying to ease her mind. "I bet you like the Spice Girls. I met the Spice Girls," he confides.

  Faith blinks at him. "Are you the reason that my grandma fell down?"

  Ian feels his stomach clench. "I think I am, Faith. And I'm very sorry."

  She turns away. "I don't like you."

  "You're in good company." He waits for her to move, or for the policeman to claim her, but before this can happen, Mariah White walks out of the ER, red-eyed and searching. Her eyes find Faith, and the girl jumps out of her seat and into her mother's embrace. Mariah stares coldly at Ian. "The policeman...he was..." Ian stumbles over the words, gesturing down the hall.

  "You get away from my daughter," she says stiffly. With her arm around Faith, she disappears back through the swinging doors of the ER.

  Ian watches them go and then approaches the triage nurse. "I assume Mrs. White's mother didn't make it."

  The nurse doesn't glance up from her paperwork. "You assume right."

  The thing about tragedy is that it hits suddenly, with all the power and fury of a hurricane. Mariah holds Faith's hand tightly as they stand beside her own mother's body. The ER cubicle is empty of medical personnel now, and a kind nurse has removed the tubes and needles in Millie's body for the family's private good-bye. It is Mariah's decision to let Faith in. She doesn't want to do it, but she knows it is the only way Faith will believe her when she says that her grandmother is gone.

  "Do you know," Mariah says, her voice thick, "what it means if Grandma's dead?"

  Before Faith can answer, Mariah begins to cry. She sits down on a chair beside Millie's body, her face in her hands. At first she does not pay attention to the screeching sound on the other side of the gurney. By the time she looks up, Faith has managed to drag the other folding chair over. She stands on the seat, her cheek pressed to Millie's chest, her arms awkwardly wrapped around her grandmother's body.

  For a moment Mariah feels the hair on the bac
k of her neck stand up, and she touches her palm to it. But her gaze never wavers from Faith--not when Faith lifts herself up on her elbows, not when Faith places her hands on either side of Millie's face and kisses her full on the mouth, not when Millie's arms rise stiff and slow and cling to her granddaughter for dear life.

  FIVE

  A simple child

  That lightly draws its breath,

  And feels its life in every limb,

  What should it know of death?

  --William Wordsworth

  September 30, 1999

  For many hours after my mother comes back to life, I cannot stop shaking. I sit in the ER while the same doctor who signed her death certificate now gives her a battery of exams and guardedly pronounces her healthy. I tuck my hands beneath my thighs and pretend that it is perfectly normal for a woman who's been pronounced DOA to now walk around the halls of the hospital.

  The doctor wants to keep my mother overnight for observation. "No way," she insists. "I'm running, I'm jumping, I'm not even breaking a sweat. I should always be this healthy."

  "Ma, it's probably not such a bad idea. You were in cardiac arrest."

  "You were dead," the physician stresses. "There were guys in med school who had stories of corpses sitting up in the morgue just as the body bag was being zipped. I always wanted to have a story like that myself." As my mother and I exchange a look, he clears his throat. "At any rate, we'll want to do a cardiogram, a CT scan, some other tests, and check your heart medication."

  My mother snorts. "Make sure I'm not a vegetable, you mean."

  "Make sure you don't have a relapse," the doctor corrects. "Let me get a nurse to wheel you up to a patient floor."

  "Thank you very much, I can walk," my mother says, hopping off the table.

  The doctor starts to leave the cubicle, still shaking his head. I hurry across and touch his sleeve, motioning just outside the curtains. "Is she really all right? Is this some glitch in her nervous system, you know, and an hour from now she'll be comatose?"