Keeping Faith

by Jodi Picoult

  I sink onto the stairs. "Why did you bring this to me?"

  "I knew eventually you'd see it. At the time, I thought bringing it here in person would be a mitzvah. I figured it was easier to get bad news from a friend."

  A friend? "I was hospitalized," I hear myself admit. "My husband had me committed after I tried to kill myself. But I wasn't psychotic like this...Hebert idiot says. And I never had hallucinations about God. I certainly didn't pass them along to Faith."

  "I never thought you did, Mrs. White."

  "What makes you so sure?" I ask, bitter.

  Rabbi Solomon shrugs. "There's a theory that there are thirty-six people in every generation who are truly righteous people. They're called the lamed vavniks--lamed for 'thirty,' and vav for 'six.' Usually they're quiet people, gentle, sometimes even unlearned--not unlike your little girl. They don't push forward. Most people don't know about them. But they exist, Mrs. White. They keep the world going."

  "You know this for a fact. And you know that Faith is one."

  "I know that the world's been around for a very long time. And yes, I'd like to believe that Faith is one." Above us, the hall clock chimes. "Wouldn't you?"

  Monsignor Theodore O'Shaughnessy does not get a chance to return Father MacReady's phone call until the following night. He's been busy untangling the administrative nightmares in his little diocese--overseeing the fiscal woes of parochial schools and Catholic hospitals, researching competitive insurance premiums, and, in one particularly overwhelming chunk of time, dealing with a nasty trial involving a Manchester priest and a group of preteen boys at a retreat in the summer of 1987. He sits down in his favorite brown cracked-leather wing chair, picks up the piece of paper with Father MacReady's message, and dials the phone.

  "Joseph!" he says jovially when the priest answers on the other end of the line. "It's Monsignor O'Shaughnessy. Been a while, hasn't it?" In fact, it has been a very long while. The monsignor can conjure a face in his mind, but he's not sure if it belongs to Father MacReady of New Canaan or Father MacDougal of New London. "You wanted to speak about a youth mission?"

  "No," Father MacReady says. "A youth's vision."

  "Ah. I'm afraid that Betty's a bit old for the secretarial job. She's lost most of her hearing, matter of fact, but I can't bear to let her go. So--it's a vision? As in apparition?" A youth mission--say, building houses for Habitat for Humanity--is one thing. It might even defray some of the bad press the diocese is getting through the sexual-abuse trial. This...well, this is only going to make them look even worse. "What kind of vision?"

  "There's a local child here, a seven-year-old girl, who is apparently seeing God." MacReady hesitates and then adds, "Technically, she's of the Jewish faith."

  "Then it's not our problem," the monsignor says, greatly relieved.

  "She may also have stigmata."

  Monsignor O'Shaughnessy thinks that, all in all, this has been a very tough week. "You know what I'm going to do for you? I'm going to call Bishop Andrews. This is really out of my range of expertise."

  "But--"

  "No buts," the monsignor says magnanimously. "My pleasure."

  He hangs up before Father MacReady can tell him that God, to Faith White, is female. Exhaling heavily, Joseph sets the phone back in its cradle and thinks that maybe this omission is not such a bad thing at all.

  October 17, 1999

  The thing Colin White likes about Las Vegas is this: It never shuts down. As a sales rep, he's spent time in Washington, Seattle, St. Paul, San Diego--all of those cities roll up their sidewalks by midnight. Las Vegas throbs like an artery, sucks you in, seduces.

  The thing Colin White does not like about Las Vegas is this: He can't get a good night's sleep. He doesn't know if it is because the city burns just outside the hotel window, neon casino signs bright enough to create an artificial day. Or because he cannot get used to his new wife's shifting in his bed all night long. Or maybe he is thinking of Faith, of how he's left her hanging, of what sort of father that makes him.

  He leaves Jessica buried in the spiral curl of sleep and walks into the adjoining living-room of the suite, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. There is a half-eaten apple from the complimentary fruit basket balanced on the arm of the couch. With a sigh Colin sinks onto the cushions and picks up the core, gnawing as he points the remote control at the television set.

  There is a commercial promoting vacations in New Hampshire. Colin stares at the wash of fall colors and the profile of the Man in the Mountain, the steep ski runs. With a pang of homesickness he sets down the apple and leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees.

  If it were not certain to upset Jessica, he would cut the honeymoon short. There is so much he needs to do to settle his previous life before forging ahead with this new one. He would like to apologize to Mariah for the simple fact that they were not meant to live together. He would like to feel the weight of Faith settled in his arms, the sweet scent of her hair when he leans close to pull up the covers as he puts her to sleep. He would like to be able to say the word "family" without his gut twisting like a sailor's knot.

  On television there's an aerial view of the Mount Washington Hotel.

  Snatching the telephone from its receiver, Colin pushes in nearly all the digits of his former number before realizing that in New Hampshire it is four-thirty in the morning. He sets the phone down. Surely Faith is asleep right now.

  The familiar theme music of Hollywood Tonight! fills the small room. Figures they'd air that crap in the middle of the night. He stretches out on the couch and closes his eyes, opening them just a slit when he hears the voice of Petra Saganoff. He might be tired, but he isn't dead.

  Her smoky voice rolls over him like a blanket, as a bright-blue banner fills the screen: THE LITTLEST SAINT? "As you can see," Saganoff says, "we're on location, following a story that began last week with Rafael Civernos, the pediatric-AIDS baby who was miraculously cured after playing with a little girl in the yard right behind me." Squinting, Colin tries to figure out what's so familiar about Petra Saganoff--something he can't quite put his finger on.

  "Hollywood Tonight! has now discovered that the seven-year-old miracle worker has been hospitalized herself, for a mysterious, inexplicable ailment." The footage changes to stock photos of stained-glass windows. "For centuries, Christian saints have manifested religious ecstasy by receiving stigmata--medically impossible wounds on the hands, side, and feet that mirror those of Jesus on the cross." Saganoff's voice-over begins to lull Colin to sleep. "For one New Hampshire child, this is only the latest in a growing list of proof that God has somehow touched her."

  Petra Saganoff is back again, standing in front of a stone wall that is lined with people in blankets and sleeping bags, carrying flowers and rosaries and cameras. "As you can see, Jim, the public acceptance of the girl's claims is growing by the hour. By now there are over two hundred people here who've heard about the visions and miracles of this little girl and want, somehow, to come in contact with her."

  The screen pulls back to reveal the Hollywood Tonight! anchor. "Any word on the girl's medical condition to date?"

  "We know she came home from the hospital, Jim. It remains to be seen if this pint-sized healer will now be able to heal herself. This is Petra Saganoff, on location for Hollywood Tonight!"

  Colin sits up, suddenly realizing why this all looks so familiar: Petra Saganoff is standing on the eastern edge of his own driveway.

  October 18, 1999

  "You know what?" Ian interrupts, leaving David with his mouth gaping. "I don't give a flying fuck. All I know is that it's your job to tell me what's going on between the pages of The Boston Globe, and this one crucial tidbit was something you managed to overlook." His voice has risen with each word, to the point where he's backed young David to the narrow door of the Winnebago. Grabbing yesterday's paper from the media assistant's shaking hand, he barely has to scowl in the boy's direction before David flees from the RV.

  Ian sinks
onto the uncomfortable couch and scans the small piece again, searching for something he's missed. It is an article that should be sending him over the moon with joy--an indirect dig at Faith's credibility that doesn't put Ian himself in the position of muckraker. Allen McManus did a better job than he'd anticipated, not only accessing the records of the court injunction that locked Mariah away but also getting confirmation from a psychiatrist that she was indeed a patient. If this were any other case, Ian would be on his cell phone inviting McManus to come speak at an impromptu press conference. He would be subtly suggesting other routes the reporter might use to slander the White family in general.

  Instead all Ian can do is wonder why the hell he ever anonymously phoned McManus's office in the first place.

  Ian closes his eyes and knocks his head against the wall of the Winnebago, trying to remember when he'd set that particular ball rolling. Ah, that's right--Millie Epstein's return from the dead. Well, Ian almost excuses himself for that; it's hard to beat. And if he's going to be honest, he's done this sort of thing a hundred times before. In his mind, the more doubts you sow, the more followers you reap. The problem here isn't that he set the reporter on the trail, it's that he set him on the trail of Mariah White.

  The hell of it is, he likes her. He knows he shouldn't; he knows that it interferes with his judgment--but there it is, all the same. A physical attraction he could dismiss, but it goes beyond that. There are times he's found himself wishing she weren't involved in this case, so that in the end she would not be the one hurt. And that foreign feeling scares him to death.

  A knock at the door interrupts his thoughts. Ian yanks it open, expecting to find a penitent David begging for his job, but instead there's someone he's never in his life seen before. The man is middle-aged, with a slight belly and thinning blond hair. He wears a baseball jacket with stains near the line of the zipper. "Hey! I see you're already a fan of mine," says the stranger.

  Ian glances at his fist, still clutching the Globe article.

  "Allen McManus," the man says, holding out his hand. "It's an honor to meet you. I came here to continue the series, and saw the Winnebago, and...what can I say? I guess we're all after the same story. Great minds think alike."

  Ian ignores the man's hand. "And you're not one of them."

  "But you--"

  He grasps McManus's fingers tightly in what would look like a handshake to a passerby, while actually causing great pain. "I work alone," Ian says through his teeth. "And if you ever suggest that I'm in any way affiliated with the bullshit you're printing, I will find so many skeletons in your closet that your boss won't let you write the alphabet, much less the obits." Then, with great satisfaction, he slams the door in the reporter's face.

  At age seven Constantine Christopher Andrews sewed bits of barbed wire into the linings of his clothes, figuring that the only way out of the neighborhood he'd been born in and would probably die in was to do enough penance for God to notice him. His mother, who never bothered to learn English after coming over on the boat from Sicily, always assumed he'd become a priest--the premonition having something to do with a strawberry birthmark in the shape of the cross that clearly marked his belly upon birth. Constantine grew up hearing of his imminent ordination so often that he, too, grew to accept it as fact.

  He loved Catholicism. It was a weekly dose of color and gilt and grandeur in a piss-poor immigrant ghetto. His dedication was duly rewarded, and he moved up the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy to the point where, for the past fifteen years, he's served as a bishop. He wanted to retire five years ago, but the Pope wouldn't let him. It's been so long since he's mingled with grassroots Catholics--so long, in fact, since his religion has meant anything more than oiling the wheels in major fund-raising campaigns--that when Monsignor O'Shaughnessy calls with the story of an alleged stigmatic, he is momentarily thrown for a loop.

  "What are we talking here?" he asks, exasperated because taking this call means he's going to be late to the Heritage Breakfast at the Italian Center, with some of the richest Catholic businessmen in Manchester. "Hands, feet, sides?"

  "As far as I know," the monsignor says, "hands only. Apparently the child is Jewish."

  "Well, that's that. Let the rabbis take care of her."

  "They could. Except there's already been press attention. According to Father MacReady, about three hundred practicing Catholics have visited the site." He clears his throat. "There's also the small matter of an alleged resurrection."

  "Press attention, you say?" Bishop Andrews considers. One of the phenomena he's noticed as a member of the Catholic hierarchy is that donations to the Church get more frequent when the faith is promoted as a result of good PR. If he reaches his fund-raising goal by December, perhaps he'll be able to take a little time golfing in Scottsdale.

  He wishes, not for the first time, that he were the bishop of a big city like Boston, rather than a small, poor diocese in southern New Hampshire. "I sent three candidates down to St. John's this year. They ought to be able to spare us a seminary priest to look into the matter."

  "Very good, Your Excellency. I'll let Father MacReady know."

  The bishop hangs up the phone and then places a call to the Rector of St. John's Seminary in Boston, talking about the Celtics game for a minute before getting down to business with the same calculated charm he usually saves for glad-handing. It takes less than ten minutes for the rector to cough up a name, which Andrews writes on a slip of paper and routes to his assistant. By the time he leaves his office, he's thinking about whether he'll have the waffles or the French toast, having completely erased the young girl with stigmata from his mind.

  The way Faith knows it is not going to be a very good day is that her mother has made banana pancakes for breakfast. She likes pancakes, on the whole, but when the bananas hit the griddle they smell like feet, and the whole time she's trying to swallow, she finds herself thinking of sweaty socks instead, which at breakfast is enough to make you throw up. She must have told her mother a gazillion times that she doesn't like banana pancakes, but, like most things she says, it doesn't stick, causing Faith to wonder if she's really making noise when she speaks or if the volume is turned up only inside her head.

  "Ma," she says, sliding into place at the table, "I want something else."

  Without speaking, her mother sidles over and removes the banana pancakes. Faith's jaw drops. Whenever her mother goes to the trouble of whipping out more than a cereal box for breakfast, it means that she's put enough time and effort into the meal for Faith to eat whatever is on her plate, thank you very much. Faith watches her mother dump the pancakes into the garbage disposal and absentmindedly flip the switch.

  "What am I supposed to eat?"

  Her mother blinks at her. "Oh," she says, coming back to earth. "I don't know. Oatmeal?" Without waiting for Faith's approval, she rips open a packet and dumps it into a bowl, then adds water from the Insta-Hot tap. Faith hears the bowl ring as her mother sets it down, and she sniffs. Banana.

  "I bet Daddy wouldn't make me eat stuff that's totally gross like this," she mutters.

  Her mother whips around. "What did you say?"

  Faith lifts her chin. "I bet if I lived with Daddy, he wouldn't make me eat this."

  Her mother's eyes are droopy and red, and her voice is so soft that it hurts Faith just to listen to it. Immediately she feels as if she's been kicked in the stomach. She watches her mother swallow hard, as though the banana oatmeal were stuck in her throat. "Do you want to live with Daddy?"

  Faith bites her lip. She loves her father, that much is true, but there is something different about her mother--something easier and more involved--and after all these years of living on the fringe of her mother's life, Faith is not willing to give up a precious second.

  "What I want," Faith says carefully, "is to stay here."

  It is worth it, the way her mother rushes the space between them to gather Faith in her arms. What is even better is that her mother sticks her elbow in
the banana oatmeal. "Damn," she says, and then blushes. "I guess I'd better get you something else."

  "I guess."

  She watches her mother rinse out her sleeve and wet a sponge. "I'm not very good at this," she says as she begins to wipe down the table.

  Globs of oatmeal spill over the edge, landing on Faith's lap and the floor. She looks up at the way her mother's hair curtains half of her face, at the little dimple in her cheek. As a toddler, Faith would touch that spot on her mother's cheek and then wait for it to cave in when she grinned. She loved that, the way she could fall right into her mother's smile.

  "You're doing great," Faith says, and shyly rises off her seat to kiss the bow of her mother's neck.

  Father MacReady sneaks a glance at the priest in the passenger seat of his old Chevy and thinks that having a graduate degree in pastoral psychology isn't what makes you an expert. Father Rourke, fresh from St. John's Seminary, is still wet behind the ears. He's so young that he probably wasn't even born when Father MacReady was overseas in 'Nam. And being stuck in Boston, in seminary, only makes him an ivy-tower type. He wouldn't know how to counsel a parishioner if one fell into his lap.

  But of course Father MacReady doesn't say anything of the sort. "Pastoral psychology," he says amiably, turning onto Mariah White's road. "What made you get into that?"

  Father Rourke crosses his leg, a Polarfleece sock and Birkenstock sandal peeking out from beneath his black trousers. "Oh, a gift for people, I guess. I would have been a psychiatrist, I suppose, if I hadn't felt another calling."

  And the profound need to tell everyone about it. "Well, I don't know how much the rector told you about Faith White."

  "Not a lot," Rourke says. "Just that I'm here to check out her mental state."

  "For the record, that's been done. By lay psychiatrists."

  Rourke turns in his seat. "You do realize that the chance of this child's being a true visionary is basically nonexistent?"

  Father MacReady smiles. "Don't you ever see a glass as half full?"