Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  making it impossible for the visiting priest to enter.

  Just as quickly, he steps back. “Father.” He nods. “I hope your trip was all right?”

  “A little bit of rain near Brattleboro,”

  Paul says, the mutual antagonism vanishing into professional politesse like smoke.

  “Come in,” Father MacReady says, glancing around. “Can I get your bag for you?”

  “That’s all right. I don’t imagine I’ll be staying.”

  This is news to Father MacReady. Although he isn’t thrilled to share his home with some pompous,

  published yahoo from St. Joseph’s, he knows that it will reflect poorly on himself if he fails to offer enough hospitality. “It’s no trouble.”

  “No, of course not. I just believe I’ll be able to wrap this case up in a matter of hours.”

  At that, Joseph MacReady laughs. “Do you? Maybe you’d better come inside.”

  On the plane home from Kansas City Ian sits apart from Faith and me, since we don’t want to attract attention by being seen together. An hour into the flight, while Faith is busy listening to the movie, I hesitantly creep into the darkened first-class cabin and take the seat beside him. He reaches over the seat divider and squeezes my hand. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “How’s everything back there?”

  “Fine. We had cereal for breakfast. You?”

  “Waffles.”

  “Oh,” I answer politely, thinking that this is not the conversation two people who made love so magically the night before ought to be having.

  “Have you thought about the hearing?”

  I’ve told Ian everything my mother told me: Joan Standish has received word that Colin’s suing me for custody of Faith. “What can I do? He’ll say that Faith shouldn’t have to live with a hundred people shoving to take her picture and ask her questions every time she leaves the house. Who’s going to disagree with that?”

  “You know I’ll do what I can to help,” Ian says, but I do not know that, not at all. Now that we are headed home, the differences between us have sprung up, a minefield that makes it impossible to recall the seamless landscape of the night before. When we step off this plane,

  by necessity, Ian and I will be on very different sides of a controversial issue.

  We both sit silently, brooding. Then Ian reaches for my hand, turning it over in his own before he starts to speak. “I have to tell you something,

  Mariah. I wanted Faith to fail. I thought you were putting her up to this … prophet show for the attention. I deliberately set out to win your sympathy, so that you’d take her to Michael.”

  “You already said this to me the other–“

  “Hear me out, all right? I did and said whatever I could to get you there–including when I told you I was starting to believe in Faith. That was a lie, just one more thing to make sure you’d go to Lockwood. I was hot-miked that night. I taped you saying that Faith would give her healing powers a try. And when we got to Lockwood,

  I taped that whole damned fiasco. I was going to show the way you two ran your sting.”

  Stricken, I have to force my lips to move.

  “There’s your proof, then.”

  “No. After Michael pitched his fit and I realized Faith hadn’t been able to work a miracle, I was furious. I had my story, and it didn’t make a heap of difference so long as Michael was still rocking back and forth. I lied to you, Mariah, but I lied to myself, too. I didn’t want Faith to be a fraud, not when it came to my brother.” He looks at me. “I tossed the tape into the pond in Lockwood’s garden.”

  I glance into my lap, one question tumbling through my mind. I have to know, I have to. “Last night … were you lying to me, then, too?”

  Ian lifts my chin. “No. If you believe nothing else I’ve told you, believe that one thing.”

  I let out the breath I’ve been holding and pull away from him. “I would just ask you one favor–if you could hold off on your show until after the preliminary hearing …”

  “I’m not going to get on the air and say Faith couldn’t work a miracle.”

  His voice is so soft that I realize what I’ve overlooked: Any reference to Faith is going to circle right back to Ian’s own brother.

  “You don’t want anyone to know about Michael.”

  “That’s not why. It’s because Faith did work one.”

  I sit back, stunned. “She did not. I was there. I watched you leave the room.”

  “When I went back this morning, Michael and I had a real conversation. He made fun of me.

  And he reached right up and hugged me.”

  “Oh, Ian.”

  “It didn’t last for long, and at first I thought I’d just dreamed it. But I didn’t. I really had that minute with him, Mariah. One minute in twenty-five years.” He smiles sadly.

  “One hell of a minute.” His expression clears as he turns to me. “Autism … it isn’t like that. It doesn’t switch on and off like a faucet. Even on Michael’s good days, he’s always been … apart. But this morning he was the brother I’d always wanted to have–and that’s beyond the power of science. I can’t tell you that I believe in God. But, Mariah … I do believe Faith can heal.”

  The wheels of my mind turn. I imagine Ian stepping onto the front lawn and convoking the press. I imagine them hanging on his every word.

  I imagine the furor that will ensue when Ian, the most influential doubting Thomas of them all,

  announces that he’s found the real thing.

  They will never let go of Faith.

  “Lie,” I say quickly. “Tell everyone Faith couldn’t do it.”

  “I don’t lie. That’s the whole point of the show.”

  By now I am on the verge of tears. “You have to lie. You have to.”

  Ian takes my hand and brings it to his mouth,

  kisses each finger. “Hush, now. We’ll figure it all out.”

  “We?” I shake my head. “Ian, there is no “we.” There’s you and your show, and there’s me and custody. If one of us wins, the other one loses.”

  He tucks my head onto his shoulder, his voice soothing. “Ssh. Let’s pretend it’s six months from now. And I already know the name of the high school you went to, and your favorite Disney dwarf, and how you take your coffee.”

  I smile hesitantly. “And we sit around on Saturday nights watching videos.”

  “And I wear my boxers to breakfast. And you let me see you without makeup.”

  “You already have.”

  “You see?” Ian brushes his lips across my forehead, erasing the worry. “We’re halfway there.”

  No. Haverhill, New Hampshire A. Warren Rothbottam likes his show tunes. He likes them so much, in fact, that he’s personally paid to have his judge’s chambers at the Grafton County Superior Court rewired with a state-of-the-art stereo system and cleverly hidden Bose speakers, which make it seem as if Carol Channing is robustly singing from behind the neat row of New Hampshire Procedural Law books. The music, however, is too big for the room, and often spills into the hall or through the walls. Most people do not mind. If anything, it gives a certain character to the courthouse that the squat, unremarkable building in the middle of nowhere does not manage by itself.

  Today, before settling down behind his desk, Judge Rothbottam selected Evita. He closes his eyes and slices his hands through the air, humming loudly enough to be heard in the hall.

  “Your Honor.”

  The timid voice cuts through his orchestration, and Rothbottam scowls. Punching a button on his intercom, the music dulls. “What,

  McCarthy? This better be good.”

  The clerk of the court is shaking. Everyone knows that when Judge Rothbottam puts on an original-cast recording, he isn’t to be disturbed. Something about the sanctity of the music.

  But then again, an emergency motion is an emergency motion. And Malcolm Metz is too famous a lawyer to be put off by a county clerk.

  “I’m sorry, Yo
ur Honor, really. It’s just that Mr. Metz called for the third time in response to his emergency motion.”

  “You know what you can tell him to do with his emergency motion?”

  McCarthy swallows. “I can guess, Your Honor. Would that be a denial, then?”

  Scowling, Rothbottam reaches beneath his desk,

  and the glorious voice of Patti LuPone cuts off in the middle of a high C. The judge has never met Malcolm Metz, but one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to move in the circles of the New Hampshire legal system and not know about him. A highly paid rainmaker in a prestigious Manchester law firm, Metz has managed to reel in case after case receiving plenty of TV coverage: the custody battle for Baby J that resulted in a nasty courtroom war between a surrogate mother and an adoptive family, the sexual harassment suit won by a secretary against her senator boss, the current fiasco involving the split between a Mafia don and his bimbo wife. Rothbottam does not care for grandstanding; he leaves that to the legitimate theater.

  If his courtroom has to be violated by some asshole like Metz, the counselor will damn well play by the judge’s rules.

  “Just a second,” Rothbottam says to the clerk. He thumbs through the motion to modify custody that Metz has filed that morning and the accompanying brief requesting an ex parte hearing. According to Metz, the child is in grave danger and needs to be removed from the mother’s influence immediately; the ex parte motion is necessary before the defendant even gets wind of the motion to modify custody.

  Just the kind of dramatic bullshit he’d expect from Malcolm Metz.

  Rothbottam scans the brief. White very.

  White. He just heard the divorce a month ago, and there hadn’t been any custody issues then. What the hell is going on?

  He does not realize that he’s spoken aloud until he hears McCarthy on the intercom.

  “Well, Your Honor, she’s that girl. The one who’s been on the news.”

  “Who is?”

  “The one the father wants custody of Faith White.”

  The seven-year-old who is raising the dead and speaking to God and showing stigmata. Rothbottam groans. No wonder Metz is deigning to come to New Canaan, New Hampshire. “You know,

  I don’t know Metz at all. I don’t even want to know him, although I guess I’m not going to be so lucky. But I do know Joan Standish, who represented the mother in the divorce.

  Call Metz and tell him to be here at three o’clock. Let him know that Joan and her client will be joining him. I’ll listen to his argument about the child being in danger, and we’ll set a date for the custody hearing.”

  “All right, Your Honor.” The clerk beeps off the intercom after agreeing to find the judge the latest newspaper stories about Faith White.

  Rothbottam sits at his desk for a moment, then walks to the bookshelves and extracts a new original-cast recording from the many stacks.

  The music from Jesus Christ Superstar fills his chambers, and Rothbottam smiles.

  There is nothing wrong, nothing at all, with getting in the mood for what is yet to come.

  Manchester, New Hampshire Malcolm Metz moves so gracefully in the leather swivel chair that he looks like a twentieth-century version of a centaur as he gestures to his three minions and finishes telling the joke. “So Saint Peter opens the gates of heaven and lets in a pope and a lawyer.

  “Come in,” he tells them. “I’ll show you to your new quarters.”" Metz glances around. A skilled litigator, after all, is at best a superb actor.

  “Saint Peter stops off at a tremendous golden penthouse, built on top of a cloud.

  He leads them inside and shows them the gold faucets in the bathrooms and the silk bedding and the expensive rugs in the halls. Then he turns to the lawyer and says, “This is your new home.” He leaves with the pope, and takes him to a tiny cell with a little twin bed and a washstand.

  “And this,” he says, “is where you are going to live from now on.”"

  Metz adopts a lilting Italian accent.

  “”Now, wait a second!” the pope cries.

  “I’ve lived a pious life and led the Catholic Church–but I have to live here while that lawyer gets a penthouse?”‘ Saint Peter nods. “Yes,” he says. “See, we’ve got plenty of popes up here. But this is the first time we’ve ever had a lawyer!”"

  The conference room erupts into laughter–no one likes lawyer jokes more than lawyers. But Metz is equally aware that he could have read a perfectly dull legal statute aloud,

  and if he’d expected his associates to find it funny, they would have been rolling on the floor.

  At the sound of the intercom, he holds up a hand,

  and the younger lawyers fall silent. “Peggy,”

  Metz says to his secretary, “put him through.”

  They watch him with expectant faces. “All right. Yes, I see.” Metz hangs up the receiver and folds his hands on the polished table.

  “Gentlemen and lady,” he says, “the ex parte motion has been denied.”

  He turns to Hunstead, his first associate.

  “Call Colin White. Tell him to get himself into a good suit and meet me at the Grafton County Courthouse at two-thirty P.m.

  Lee,” he says to a second man, “tip off the media. I want them to know the father thinks his daughter’s in danger.”

  The two associates run off, leaving Metz alone with the third. “I’m sorry, Mr.

  Metz,” Elkland says. “A lucky break would’ve been nice.”

  Metz shrugs, collecting his papers and files. “Actually, I never expected the judge to rule in my favor.” He taps the legal pads on their edges, aligning them. “I only filed it so that the judge could deny it, and get that out of his system. Let’s face it–no small-town judge wants someone like me cruising into his courtroom. I’d much rather have Rothbottam use this motion as a pissing contest to show me who’s boss, instead of something intrinsic to the case.”

  The associate is surprised. “Then this was just strategic? Isn’t the kid in danger?”

  “Hell, who knows? Filing an ex parte motion keeps the father happy. Denying it keeps the judge happy. And you know what makes me happy?”

  “Knowing that you’re going to win?”

  Metz pats her shoulder. “I knew I hired you for a reason,” he says.

  New Canaan, New Hampshire “The mother isn’t going to let you near Faith,”

  Father MacReady says, watching the visiting priest move about the rectory’s tiny guest room. “I can’t blame her.”

  Father Rampini turns in a smooth motion.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s Jewish. We’ve got no right to be there.”

  “She’s spouting heresy,” Father Rampini corrects. “If we don’t have jurisdiction over the person making the claims, we at least can control what she says that misleads good Catholics.” He lifts a jacket and hangs it in the closet. “Surely you take issue with a female apparition?”

  “No. The Church has accredited plenty of visions of Mary.”

  “Are we talking about Mary? No. God in a dress, God as a mother.” Rampini frowns.

  “You have no problem with this?”

  Father MacReady turns away. He has taken vows that hold him to helping others for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t take away the occasional urge to plant a facer. He sits at the small table and drums his fingers on its surface, casually glancing at the stack of books Rampini has placed there and the Saint-A-Day desk calendar, open to November 7. Saint Albinus, he reads. If he remembers correctly, Saint Albinus killed an evil man by breathing into his face.

  “Maybe God just looks different to a seven-year-old,” Father MacReady muses.

  “Tell that to the children at Fatima,” Rampini says. “Three kids, who–unlike Faith White–all saw the same vision of Mary. They didn’t say she was wearing pants or smoking a hookah. They saw the Blessed Virgin the way she’s traditionally pictured.”

  “But not everyone has traditional visions.

&nb
sp; Saint Bernadette said the Virgin spoke to her in French patois.”

  “Cultural resonance isn’t part and parcel of a vision. So what if the Virgin was speaking French to Bernadette? She was still too uneducated to know what Mary meant when she referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception.”

  Rampini zips his duffel bag and slides it beneath the bed. “Everything you’ve told me and everything I’ve read suggests that this is a crock. It’s a hallucination, one the girl’s managed to pass along into a mild hysteria. If Faith White is seeing God, there’s no way He would appear in the form of a woman. Either an apparition is Jesus Christ or it is not.” He shrugs.

  “I’m more likely to consider the visions satanic than divine.”

  MacReady runs his finger along the tabletop,

  scattering a fine layer of dust. “There’s concrete, objective proof.”

  “Right. The resurrections and the healing. I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: I’ve read about Lourdes and Guadalupe and a hundred others, but in my lifetime I’ve yet to see a bona fide miracle worker.”

  Joseph MacReady meets his gaze. “For a good Catholic, Father, you sound an awful lot like a Pharisee.”

  I am still half asleep when I hear Ian,

  speaking from the plane seat beside Faith. “I didn’t get to thank you.” I will my eyelids to stay slitted, and just listen.

  Faith doesn’t answer him. “You did it,

  didn’t you?” Ian presses. “You gave Michael those few minutes.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Ian shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t believe a lot of stuff.”

  He grins. “Call me Ian.”

  “Okay.” They stare at each other. Faith smooths down the front of her shirt, and Ian uncrosses his legs. “Ian? You can hold my mother’s hand if you want.”

  Ian nods gravely. “Thank you.” He hesitates for a moment. “Can I hold yours?”

  Faith slowly extends her hand, with the Band-Aid at its center. Ian slips his fingers around hers carefully. He does not examine the Band-Aid, doesn’t even give the supposed stigmata a second glance.

  Maybe, just maybe, Faith has worked a miracle after all.