Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Faith answers, yawning.

  Her mother’s arms come around her, hold fast.

  “Maybe we will.”

  First thing, he smells the smoke. Twin towers of fire reach up as far as he can see,

  making black spots before his eyes, but he knows that he has to get through them. His parents, Christ,

  they’re burning– He dives headfirst into the heat,

  ignoring the pain that races up his arms and legs and flays the skin off his back. His eyes swell with the heat and the soot, but he can see five fingers,

  the outline of a hand, and he stretches toward it,

  slips palm against palm, and closes around a wrist. A yank–they’re tumbling free now, and he lands clear, only to find that he’s holding tight to his brother. His brother, who cannot be touched, who cannot bear to be touched, who stares at Ian’s hands on his shoulders and screams loud,

  loud, loud–

  “Mr. Fletcher.” He jerks away,

  sweating, the covers pooled onto the floor.

  Mariah White kneels beside the hideous couch,

  touching his arm. “You were having a nightmare.”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare,” Ian insists,

  although his voice is still hoarse. It wasn’t a nightmare, because that would mean he’s been asleep for a while, and the chances of that are next to nothing.

  He shrugs away from her and huddles at the far end of the couch, wiping his sweaty face with the edge of his T-shirt.

  He should have known better than to try to stay in Kansas City and pretend that it would be all right.

  The town holds nothing for him but rotten memories. Even if his ploy to get Faith and Michael together works, it’s inevitable that he’ll experience some of the fallout.

  Mariah offers him a glass of tap water.

  Hand shaking, he takes it and drinks deeply.

  His eyes follow hers to the counter, where he’s set the nonperishable groceries. When he’d come home last night, the door to the tiny bedroom had been closed and a stack of sheets and blankets left on the couch. He’d told himself that rather than bang around cabinets and wake the Whites, he’d just get to it all in the morning. Then he’d pulled out a pad and scribbled notes for next week’s broadcast. It is the last thing he remembers,

  until finding Mariah White by his side.

  “You were saying something about a fire,” she says hesitantly.

  “I’m sure I was saying a whole lot of things.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I only just came out.”

  “I didn’t wake your daughter, did I?”

  Mariah shakes her head. “Faith sleeps like a rock.”

  “Then I apologize for waking you.”

  “Well, you didn’t exactly wake me.”

  A smile ghosts over her lips. “That mattress was a torture device in a previous life.”

  Ian laughs. “They probably used it to finish off the prisoners who didn’t succumb to this couch.”

  His eyes meet hers. “I should check on Faith,” Mariah says softly.

  “Right. You go on ahead. And I’m sorry.”

  She reaches for the sheets, tangled on the floor, and snaps them into the air so that they billow over Ian and settle like a whisper onto his lap. Then she gives a quick, smooth tug at the satin edge of the blanket, bringing it up to cover him. A simple, instinctive move, a routine any mother knows by heart, and yet Ian finds himself holding his breath until she steps away, for fear he might break the spell.

  “Good night, Ian,” she says, and he nods at her, unable to find his voice. He watches the small, smooth curves of her bare heels as they strike the floor, watches as she pulls the bedroom door shut behind her. Then he picks up his pen and pad again and smiles,

  realizing that, for the first time, Mariah White has used his given name.

  New Canaan, New Hampshire Millie is going crazy. Would it have been so much trouble for Mariah to at least call from a pay phone and say they were all right? She’s held up her part of the bargain–driving the car home, and taking care of the house in their absence, but she’s on borrowed time and she knows it. Everyone saw her get out of the car alone. Sooner or later, when Faith and Mariah don’t turn up, they’re going to start asking questions.

  Millie gets out of bed and draws back the curtain, noting the small Sterno campfires and portable lights of the TV reporters’

  cameramen. Is it her imagination, or have they nearly doubled in number?

  Millie knows Hollywood Tonight! is still here; unlike most of the TV reporters, who have about three or four people around when they make their daily broadcasts, Petra Saganoff seems to need eight or ten. She’s got lights and makeup people and men carrying machines that do God knows what. Personally, Millie could do without Petra Saganoff. If there’s going to be reporting, she’d rather see that nice Peter Jennings, in the bush vest he wears when he goes on location.

  It’s just as well that Faith and Mariah are gone. From the looks of things at the end of the driveway, they’re going to need a second policeman before long, to keep order. Mariah was unsettled by a handful of people; how would she react to this? With a sigh, Millie gets back into bed.

  She shuts off the light, then flicks it on and lifts up the receiver of the telephone beside the bed to make sure the dial tone is working, just in case.

  Lake Perry, Kansas–October 20,

  To Mariah’s surprise, Ian leaves shortly after breakfast. “Gotta earn a living,” he says, grabbing the car keys and striding out the door as if spending another moment in their company were too painful to bear. He has not mentioned his nightmare, and Mariah decides that this must be the reason he’s running–

  embarrassment can’t rest easily on the shoulders of a man like him.

  “How come he gets to go somewhere?” Faith grumbles. “And we have to stay in this ugly place where there’s nothing to do?”

  “Maybe we’ll take a walk. Find a phone and call Grandma.”

  This sparks Faith’s interest. “Then she’ll come here?”

  “In a little while, maybe. We need her to watch our house right now.”

  Faith empties more cereal into her bowl.

  “There’s a whole bunch of people watching our house.

  She doesn’t have to do that, too.”

  Mariah stands at the window as Ian drives away. He’s taking the car, granted, but that wouldn’t stop them from walking to town and hailing a taxi, returning to the airport and hopping on a new flight. Mariah assumed, when he’d offered his protection, that his good intentions were really much more selfish–what better way to observe Faith than to live in close quarters? Still, she’d figured that Ian would see of Faith only what she let him see–so she’d acquiesced.

  However, she had expected him to stick to her and Faith like glue.

  Instead, he seems almost to … trust them.

  She watches Faith lift the cereal bowl to her mouth to drink the remaining milk and starts to warn her about manners, but then stops. With so many rules to follow now that they are hiding, letting this one small thing slip cannot hurt.

  She’s reasoned out what dangers Faith has to face living with Ian Fletcher, but not herself.

  What she’d forgotten was that it was much easier to dislike a television character than an ordinary man. To see Ian’s shoes tucked under the edge of the couch or his papers strewn over the coffee table–even to walk into the bathroom and smell the faint mixture of cedar and soap that clings to his skin–well, it makes him real. It changes him from a two-dimensional cultural icon with a hell-bent desire to expose Faith into someone with feelings, doubts, even nightmares.

  If Ian Fletcher is able to trust them enough to leave them alone, can’t Mariah trust him enough to believe that renting this cabin for them was not a selfish act, but a kind one?

  She turns to Faith. “Let’s get dressed. We’re leaving.”

  It nearly breaks Ian’s heart to buy clothes at Kmar
t. A man who owns Armani suits and Bruno Magli shoes shouldn’t be reduced to shopping off the bargain rack for jeans and tennis shoes, but he knows that he’s less likely to be recognized there by a dull-eyed clerk than by a salesperson at a more exclusive boutique. He stands at the checkout, behind a mother with three children screaming for candy, and surveys the collection of items in his basket.

  “Did you find everything you needed?” the clerk asks.

  It’s blissfully quiet; the mother has succumbed and is wheeling out her children, their fingers digging into packets of MandMore’s. On impulse,

  Ian grabs another one off the shelf and tosses it onto the checkout counter, for Faith. “I believe so.”

  At the sound of his voice, the woman looks up. She squints a little, trying to connect the Southern drawl with the face. For a moment, Ian thinks the jig might be up … but then she returns to scanning the items. She must have decided he’s a look-alike. After all, what would the illustrious Ian Fletcher be doing in a Kmart?

  “Oh, I love this,” the woman says,

  holding up a shirt-and-legging set with Tweety Bird screen-printed on the front. “Got one for my own daughter.”

  Ian’s picked it out for Faith. He realized last night that they couldn’t have much in those knapsacks, and would need clothes for this unexpected stay just as much as he did.

  Unfortunately, he’s confounded by children’s sizes.

  What the hell is the difference between a 7 and a 7X?

  It was easier to find clothing for Mariah. All he had to do was imagine how high she came up on his chest, how wide her hips were and how small her waist, and he could easily match her body type to one of the many women he’d dated. She has a lovely figure, actually, but he found himself tossing into the shopping cart baggy jeans and flannel shirts, oversized sweatshirts–things that would keep her covered, that wouldn’t draw his attention.

  “That comes to one twenty-three thirty-nine,” the clerk says.

  Ian unfolds his wallet and withdraws a stack of twenties. He carries the bags to the rental car, gets inside, and then takes out his cell phone to call his producer.

  “Wilton here.”

  “Well, it’s a damn good thing one of us is,”

  Ian jokes.

  “Ian? Christ, I’ve been going crazy.

  You want to tell me where the fuck you are?”

  “Sorry, James. I know I said I’d be back last night, but there was … a family emergency.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any family.”

  “All the same, I’m going to be tied up for a while.” Ian taps his fingers on the steering wheel, knowing that there’s nothing James can do. Without Ian, there isn’t a show.

  “How long is a while?” James says after a moment.

  “I don’t know just yet. I’m definitely going to miss the Friday broadcast, though.

  You’ll have to do a rerun.”

  He can practically see James seething.

  “Well, that’s just fabulous, Ian, because we’ve already run the promos for a live show. Plus, there are about ninety reporters here, including a few national affiliates, who are dying to get the story. Maybe I ought to go ask one of them to stand in for you.”

  Ian laughs. “By all means, try Dan R. He did a real fine impression of me on Saturday Night Live, once.”

  “I’m glad you’re so fucking congenial today.

  Because you’re not gonna have more than a smile left to pitch when your show goes down the toilet.”

  “Now, James, you relax before you bust a gut. Faith White isn’t even there, right?”

  There’s a beat of silence. “How did you know that?”

  “I have my sources. And I’m only doing what I told you I’d be doing–following a story on the road.”

  James draws in his breath. “Are you saying you’re with her?”

  “I’m saying that just ’cause I’m not three feet away from you doesn’t mean I’m not still on top of things.” He glances at his watch. Christ, by now Mariah and Faith could be halfway across Missouri–but it was a chance he had to take. He’d learned long ago that the best way to catch a butterfly was not to chase it at all, but to remain so still that it made the choice to light on your shoulder. “Gotta go, James.

  I’ll be in touch.”

  Before his producer has a chance to protest,

  Ian turns off his phone and slips it into his coat pocket again. Then he drives back toward Camp Perry, slow enough to keep a watch out for a woman and a child who may have decided to leave on their own.

  Mariah’s sweating. Although it’s fairly cool outside, Faith balked at walking about a mile down the road, so she had to carry her daughter piggyback all the way to the gas station. Then she called home, reversing the charges and speaking to her mother, while Faith whined about getting candy.

  “You’re with who?” her mother had said.

  “I know, I know. But we’re going to leave.”

  At that point Mariah had spotted the number of a local taxi service, etched into the wall of the pay-phone booth. “I’ll call you when we find a place to settle.”

  As she speaks to the taxi dispatcher, she feels a thread of guilt drawing tight. Ian Fletcher has been nothing less than solicitous up to this point. For whatever reason,

  it is possible that his TV persona’s ruthlessness is only an act.

  Still, she isn’t going to stick around to find out.

  Faith is sitting on the floor, picking at dead bugs, when Mariah hangs up. The taxi will arrive in ten minutes. “What are you doing?

  You’re going to be filthy.”

  “I want candy. I’m hungry.”

  Mariah digs into her pocket for fifty cents. “That’s it. Get whatever you can for this amount.” She wipes the sweat off her forehead and watches Faith choose peanut MandMore’s, hand them to the man working behind the counter. He smiles at Mariah; she smiles back.

  “You’re not from around here,” the man says.

  Mariah thinks she’s going to be sick. “What makes you say that?”

  He laughs. “I pretty much know everyone in town, and you’re not one of those people. You get your taxi all right?”

  He must have overheard her conversation. Mariah feels her mind spin into action. “Yes … my,

  uh, husband had an errand to run, and he was supposed to pick us up here after I made a phone call. But I think my daughter’s running a fever, and I want to get her back to the motel … so we’re just going to take a cab.”

  “I’d be happy to tell him where you went, when he comes looking.”

  “That would be great,” Mariah says, edging toward the door, wanting nothing more than to cut short this conversation. “Honey, why don’t we wait outside?”

  “Good idea,” the man says, although she hasn’t included him in the invitation. “Wouldn’t mind a little fresh air myself.”

  Resigned, Mariah walks out the glass door of the gas station and stands next to the pump,

  shading her eyes to see down the road for anything that remotely resembles a cab. But from the opposite direction a car speeds into the station,

  stopping a few feet away from them.

  Ian gets out of the passenger seat, thrilled to have spotted Mariah and Faith. “Hey there.”

  He smiles at Mariah. “Looking for a ride home?”

  “Hope you got some roses, brother,” the gas-station attendant says. “You’re in the doghouse.”

  Ian continues to smile, puzzled, but all he can think of is something Faith once said, that her mother sneezes at roses. Before Mariah can stop her,

  Faith gets into the backseat of the car and sees the pile of bags on the floor. “What’s this?”

  “Presents. For you and your mama.”

  Faith pulls out the Tweety legging set, and a package of barrettes, and a sweatshirt with hearts all around the neckline. Then she tugs free a shirt that is clearly the right size for Mariah.

  This is where he went this mor
ning? To buy them all clothes?

  “Guess you won’t be needing the taxi,” the attendant says. “I’ll call the dispatcher.”

  “That … would be wonderful,” Mariah manages.

  Ian waves at the man, then gets into the car.

  Mariah slides into the front seat as well.

  “Guess y’all wanted to take a little walk around town,” he says evenly. “I just happened to see you as I was driving by.”

  Faith pipes up from the backseat. “Good, because I was getting tired of walking.”

  Mariah tries to read an accusation in his words,

  tries to make him into the sort of man she had naturally assumed he was. He turns to her.

  “Course, I can take Faith back, if you’d still like to walk a spell.”

  “No,” she says, to him and to herself. “This’ll be just fine.”

  New Canaan, New Hampshire–

  October 22, 1999 Some people blamed it on the taxi driver who took the young Father Rourke to the train station.

  Others said it was clearly a reporter snooping.

  Months later, no one clearly remembered how word leaked from the visiting priest’s files to those gathered outside Mariah White’s house, but suddenly they all knew that the God Faith White was seeing happened to be female.

  The Associated Press reporter’s three-paragraph story ran in newspapers from L.a. to New York. Jay Leno did an irreverent monologue about a female Jesus being worried about the fashion statement made by a crown of thorns. A new group of devotees arrived on the edge of the White property, letting their dismay over Faith’s absence only slightly dampen their enthusiasm. Numbering about one hundred, they came from Catholic colleges and church ladies’ guilds and taught at parochial schools. Some had fought to be ordained as female priests, but had not succeeded. Armed with Bibles and texts by Naomi Wolf, they unrolled a hastily painted MOTHERGOD SOCIETY banner and very loudly chanted the Lord’s Prayer in unison,

  changing the pronouns where necessary. They held up posters with photos retouched to look like holy cards and others that read YOU GO, GIRL!

  They were bonded and raucous, like a women’s hockey team, although most of the other followers camped outside did not consider them dangerous.