Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  But then again, they did not know that the MotherGod Society had left another hundred members spread up and down cities on the East Coast,

  handing out pamphlets emblazoned with their amended Lord’s Prayer and Faith White’s name and address.

  Manchester, NH–OCTOBER 22, 1999 “What in the name of Saint Francis is this?” Bishop Andrews asks, recoiling from the pink pamphlet as if it were a rattlesnake.

  “”Our Mother, who art in Heaven?”‘ Who wrote this garbage?”

  “It’s a new Catholic group, your Excellency,” says Father DeSoto.

  “They’re promoting an alleged New Hampshire visionary.”

  “Why does this sound familiar?”

  “Because you spoke to Monsignor O’Shaughnessy about her a week ago. Father Rourke–the pastoral psychologist from St. John’s–sent you his report by fax.”

  Bishop Andrews has not read the report.

  He spent the morning marching in the Pope Pius XII Parochial School’s homecoming parade, positioned in an antique Ford in front of a very large percussion band that gave him a headache that has not yet gone away. Father DeSoto hands him a piece of paper.

  “”Definite lack of psychotic behavior …” He’s too open-minded for his own good,”

  Andrews mutters, then picks up the phone and dials the Boston seminary.

  A female God. For Pete’s sake!

  Why send a pastoral psychologist, when this is clearly a case for a theologian?

  Lake Perry, Kansas–October 22,

  That afternoon, Ian and Faith are playing hearts when Mariah falls asleep on the couch. One moment she is talking to them, and then the next, just like that, she’s snoring. Ian watches her neck swan to the side, listens to the soft snore from her throat. God, he’s jealous. To just be able to drift off like that … in the middle of the day …

  Faith shuffles the cards and manages to send them flying. “Hey, Mr. Fletcher,” she says, scrambling to pick them up, her voice strident.

  “Sssh!” Ian nods toward the couch. “Your mama’s asleep.” He knows that having Faith in close, confined quarters with Mariah means it’s more likely than not to be a quick rest. “How’d you like to go outside?” he whispers.

  Faith pulls a face. “I don’t want to play in the grass again. I did that this morning.”

  “I recall promising you some fishing.” Ian remembers seeing an old rod and reel gathering dust in the shed beside the manager’s office. “We could give that a try.”

  Faith glances from Ian to Mariah. “I don’t think she’d want me to go.”

  Of course not, Ian thinks. Faith might unwittingly tip her hand. “A quick trip, then.

  What your mama doesn’t know isn’t gonna hurt her.” He stands up and stretches.

  “Well, I’m gonna do some fishing anyway.”

  “Wait! I just have to get on my shoes.”

  He shrugs, pretending not to care whether he has company. But this is the first time he’s been alone with Faith White, except for the night she ran away bleeding. There’s so damn much he wants to know about her, he doesn’t even know where to start.

  It’s crisp and cool outside, and the sun is hanging heavy in the sky. He walks with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, pretending not to notice how hard Faith is huffing and puffing to keep up with him. Retrieving the fishing rod and a small gardener’s spade, Ian strikes out toward the lake.

  He squats at the edge near a patch of cattails and offers Faith the small shovel.

  “You want to dig, or shall I?”

  “You mean, like, for worms?”

  “No, for buried treasure. What’d you think we were gonna use as bait?”

  Faith takes the spade and makes a halfhearted attempt to overturn the thick marsh grass. Ian stares at the Band-Aids still on her hands, one on the outside and one on the inside of each palm. He, of course, has studied case histories of alleged stigmatics–in his profession, you have to know the competition. He remembers reading how painful the wounds are supposed to be, not that he really ever bought it. Still,

  he wrests the shovel from Faith. “Let me,”

  he says gruffly.

  He unearths a chunk of grass, peeling it back like a scalp to reveal several purple worms pulsing through the dirt. Faith wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

  “Not if you’re a largemouth bass.” He gathers a few in a small plastic bag and directs Faith toward the dock. “You go on over there. Take the rod with you.”

  He finds her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the water. “Your mama finds you like that,

  she’s going to pitch a fit.”

  Faith glances back over her shoulder. “The only way she’d find out is if you told her I’d come out here with you, and then she’d be too angry at you to yell at me.”

  “Guess we’re partners in crime, then.”

  Ian reaches out a hand to help her stand. “So–you know how to cast? Your daddy ever take you fishing?”

  “Nope. Did yours?”

  Just like that, his hand stills on Faith’s. She’s squinting up at him, her face partially hidden by shadows. “No,” he says. “I don’t reckon he did.” He puts his arms around Faith from behind and closes his hands on hers. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft; he can feel her shoulder blades bumping against his chest. “Like this.” He tips back the rod and lets the line fly.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  He sits beside Faith as she digs her thumbnail into the grooves in the planking of the dock. She lifts her face toward the setting sun and closes her eyes, and Ian finds himself mesmerized by the tiny beat in the hollow of her throat. There’s a quiet between them he is almost unwilling to break, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “”Follow me,”“ he says softly, watching for her reaction, “”and I will make you fishers of men.””

  She turns her head toward him. “Huh?”

  “It’s a saying. An old one.”

  “It’s stupid. You don’t fish for men.”

  “You ought to ask God about it sometime,” Ian suggests, leaning back and covering his eyes with his forearm, just enough that he can peek out and still see her.

  Faith frowns, on the verge of saying something,

  but then she stops and picks at the wood of the dock again. Ian finds himself straining forward, waiting for a confession, but whatever Faith might have said is lost to the sudden jerk of the rod and her squeal of delight. He shows her how to reel in her catch,

  a beauty of a fish that’s every bit of three pounds.

  Then he unhooks the bass and rounds open its mouth, so that Faith can grab hold.

  “Oh,” she breathes, the tail of the fish snugging against her stomach. She’s a picture, Ian thinks, smiling. With her hair caught in the late sun and dirt streaked across her cheek, he looks at her and truly sees her not as a story, but simply as a little girl.

  The fish starts to thrash its tail, fighting for freedom. “Look at how– Oh!” Faith cries, and she drops the bass–the last thing Ian sees before she loses her footing and falls from the dock into the freezing water.

  Mariah awakens to her worst nightmare: Ian Fletcher has disappeared with Faith. Bolting upright on the couch, she screams for her daughter,

  knowing by the stillness in the small cabin that they are gone. A deck of cards lies scattered across the rug, as if he’s taken her in the middle of everything, as if he’s taken her by force.

  She will have to call the police, but that seems like an easy sacrifice if it means Faith’s safe return. With her heart pounding, Mariah races outside, so distraught that she does not even notice the car still sitting in front of the cabin. She runs toward the manager’s office,

  the nearest phone, cursing herself for putting Faith within reach of Ian Fletcher. When she rounds the corner, two figures are silhouetted against the lake, one tall, one tiny. With intense relief, Mariah stops short, her knees buckling. She cups her hands around her mouth to call out to them
, but then before her very eyes, Faith falls into the lake.

  Oh, shit! That’s all Ian has time to think before the water swallows Faith, and Mariah’s scream echoes. It’s freezing in there, and he has no idea if the kid can swim,

  and the very worst part of it is that he can’t just jump in and grab her because there’s every chance that he’ll land on top of her, push her farther down. He is distantly aware of Mariah scrabbling down the slope, yelling, but with intense focus he stares at the murky water until a pale streak of silver unfurls beneath the surface. He leaps in a few feet to the left of where he’s seen Faith’s hair, opens his eyes to the gritty underworld, and tangles his fingers in a silky skein.

  He can see her, her eyes wide and terrified, her mouth open, her hands pushing at the underside of the dock that she’s trapped beneath. Dragging her by her ponytail, he yanks Faith free and pulls her up. She crawls onto the wood, choking and sputtering, her cheek pressed against the planks as she spits up water.

  Ian hauls himself onto the dock as well, just as Mariah reaches them and folds Faith into her arms, soothing and cuddling. Only now does he let himself breathe, let himself think of what might have happened. He notices that he’s soaked and shaking; his clothes must weigh fifty pounds wet,

  and they’re freezing to boot. With a glance in Faith’s direction to make sure she is all right, he stands and slowly sets out toward the cabin to change.

  “Don’t you move!”

  Mariah’s voice, vibrating with anger, stops him. Ian turns and clears his throat to speak.

  “She’ll be fine,” he manages. “She wasn’t under for more than a few seconds.”

  But Mariah isn’t ready to give up. “How dare you take her out here without my permission?”

  “Well, I–“

  “Were you waiting for me to fall asleep so that you could sneak her out with a … a candy bar and ask her questions up one side and down the other? Did you get your precious tape? Or did you forget to take it out of your pocket when you jumped in?”

  Ian feels his lips draw away from his teeth, an involuntary snarl. “For your information,

  the only thing I asked your daughter was if her daddy ever taught her how to cast a fishing line.

  I didn’t tape a frigging word of our conversation.

  She fell into the lake by accident and got stuck under the dock. All I did was go in after her.”

  “She would never have gotten stuck under the dock if she hadn’t been standing on it in the first place!

  For all I know, you might have pushed her.”

  Ian’s eyes glitter with rage. This is what he gets for saving the child’s life? He takes a step back, breathing hard. “For all I know,”

  he sneers, “she might have walked on water.”

  Long after Mariah has fed Faith hot soup,

  bathed her, and tucked her into bed for the night, Ian still has not returned to the cabin. She finds herself pacing, staring blindly at the static on the television. She wants to apologize.

  Surely now that they’ve both had time to cool down he realizes that it was the fear talking, not really her, but she’d like to tell him so herself. After all, if Faith had wandered down to the dock by herself, she could have just as easily fallen in–and drowned.

  She waits until her daughter is sleeping deeply, then goes to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Mariah touches the curve of Faith’s cheek,

  warm as a ripe peach. How do other mothers go about keeping watch? How do they shut their eyes with the certainty that in that moment, something won’t go wrong?

  Being in water that cold could have had far more serious effects, yet Faith seems absolutely fine.

  For whatever it is worth, Faith’s God wasn’t the one to haul her out of the water; that was done by Ian himself. For this at least, Mariah owes him her gratitude.

  She sees the swinging beam of headlights cut across the small room. Walking out of the bedroom to the front door of the cabin, she waits for Ian to come inside. But a minute passes, and then another, and finally it is five minutes later.

  She peeks through the window–yes, the car is there–

  and then opens the door.

  Ian is sitting at her feet. He’s been leaning against the door. “I’m sorry,” Mariah says, coloring.

  “Nah. It’s a stupid place to sit.”

  They look at the night sky, the rotting porch, the chipped paint on the door–anywhere but at each other. “I mean that I’m really sorry.”

  “Well, so am I. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something involving Faith without getting your permission first.” Ian rubs the back of his neck. “She liked fishing, though. Right up till the end there.”

  They each imagine a picture of Faith with that bass, and it forms a bridge between them. Then Mariah sits down beside Ian, drawing a circle absently on the dirt of the porch floor. “I’m not used to letting her out of my sight,” she admits. “It’s hard for me.”

  “You’re a fine mother.”

  Mariah shakes her head. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”

  “I doubt that. I bet there’s a little girl inside that thinks so.” He leans against the side of the cabin. “I figure I owe you an apology, too. You got me riled up, or else I wouldn’t have said all that about Faith walking on water.”

  Mariah considers his words. “You know,” she says finally, “I don’t want her to be some … Messiah figure … any more than you do.”

  “What do you want?”

  She takes a deep breath. “I want her to be safe. I want her to be mine.”

  Neither of them speaks the thought that crosses their minds: that these two wishes might not both be able to come true. “She sleeping now?”

  “Yes.” Mariah glances at the cabin door.

  “Went to bed without a problem.” She watches Ian draw up one knee and hook a wrist over it, and lets herself wonder what this moment might be like if she hadn’t met Ian over a war of religious convictions, but when she dropped her purse in the grocery store, or when he gave up his seat for her on the bus. Her mind scrambles over territory she’s deliberately left untraveled, marking the raven’s wing of his hair and the brilliant blue of his eyes,

  remembering the night in the hospital when he kissed her on the cheek.

  “You know,” he says quietly. “Even during the world wars they had a cease-fire on Christmas.”

  “What?”

  “A truce, Mariah,” Ian says, his voice running over her name like a waterfall.

  “I’m saying that, just for here, just for now, maybe we could give each other the benefit of the doubt.” He grins at her. “I’m probably only half the monster you think I am.”

  She smiles back. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  He laughs out loud, and in that moment Mariah realizes that if Ian Fletcher is intimidating when he’s scowling, he’s positively threatening when he lets down his guard.

  In the middle of the night, when Faith and Mariah are long asleep, Ian sneaks into their room. He stands at the edge of the bed with all the gravity of a man on the edge of a precipice.

  Mariah holds Faith in her arms, like an ingredient that’s been folded into a batter. Their hair is woven together on the pillow. From where he’s standing, it looks almost as if they are not two people, but different incarnations of one.

  Tonight had gone better than he’d expected,

  considering his outburst at the lake. The truce is going to buy him some time, make Mariah predisposed to trust him. And, of course,

  he’ll have to act as if he trusts her. Which, in a way, comes almost too goddamned easy. Sometimes she looks like any other mother, and Faith looks like any other little girl. Until you add God to the mix.

  Lake Perry, Kansas–October 23,

  Faith sits down next to Mr. Fletcher at the breakfast table and watches her mother at the counter. “We’ve got a selection this morning of Cheerios, or Cheerios … or, if you’d rather have them,
Cheerios,” her mother says brightly.

  “I’ll have Cheerios, then.” Mr. Fletcher smiles at her mom, and right away Faith can tell there’s something different. Like the air is easier to take into your lungs.

  “How are you feeling?” Mr. Fletcher asks her.

  “Okay.” But then she sneezes.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if she caught a cold,” her mother says to Mr. Fletcher, who nods. She sets a bowl of cereal in front of Faith.

  “Give her vitamin C. You can ward off a cold if you take enough of it.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale. Like wearing garlic on a string around your neck.”

  Faith looks from one to the other and wonders how she managed to go to sleep last night and wake up this morning and somehow, in that short time, miss the entire world’s turning upside down. The last time she’d seen Mr. Fletcher and her mom together, they were shouting so loud it made her head pound.

  They’re still talking about medicines and getting sick, as if Faith isn’t even in the room.

  Quietly, she stands up and crosses the small kitchen, dragging a stepstool to the counter. She reaches for the bowls on the middle shelf of the cabinet and takes down a second one. This she fills with Cheerios and places in front of an empty seat at the table.

  “Well,” Mr. Fletcher says. “At least you’re still hungry.”

  Faith stares at him, challenging.

  “It’s not for me. It’s for God.”

  Her mother’s spoon clanks against her cereal bowl. Faith watches the two grown-ups look at each other for a long time, a staring contest to see who’ll fold first. Her mother, especially, seems to be hanging on the edge of the table, waiting for Mr. Fletcher to speak.

  After a moment he reaches for the jug of milk and passes it down the table. “Here,” he says,

  calmly taking another spoonful of his own Cheerios. “Just in case She doesn’t like it dry.”

  October 24, 1999 The next night Ian is sprawled on the couch, writing on a pad, while Mariah sits at the kitchen table. The heady scent of rubber-cement fumes wafts across the room, and although he cannot see her hands, he knows she’s busy gluing something together. Thankless job, he thinks.