“Besides Fletcher, is there anyone else on the witness list you can give me some information about?”
I try to answer, but my mouth is too dry to manage more than a puff of surprise. I am dimly aware of my mother, her eyes narrowed on my face; of the sea of letters that form and dissolve into names: Colin, Dr. Orlitz, Dr.
DeSantis. “Mariah,” Joan calls, her voice a long way away, “are you all right?”
He has said, all along, that he will help me. He has said that he’ll do whatever is in his power to make sure I keep Faith. And yet here he is, in league with Malcolm Metz,
lying to me.
What else has he lied about?
With a great surge of adrenaline I stand, pushing my chair back from the table. Joan and my mother watch me walk out of the kitchen, follow me to the parlor. When it becomes clear to them what I mean to do, Joan rushes to intervene. “Mariah,”
she cautions, “don’t fly off the handle here.”
But I’m not thinking clearly; I don’t want to think clearly. I don’t care who sees me running across the yard with a speed born of hurt and fury. I barely even pay attention to the charge that electrifies the media as I close in on the Winnebago with single-minded purpose.
I don’t even bother to knock. Chest heaving,
I stand in the doorway and stare at Ian and three of his employees, gathered around a tiny table with papers strewn all over. For a beat, Ian’s eyes speak to me: surprise, pleasure,
confusion, and wariness registering one after the other.
“Miz White,” he drawls. “What a very pleasant surprise.” He turns to the other three people and asks for a moment alone; they file from the Winnebago casting curious looks my way.
As soon as the door closes behind them, Ian comes around the table and grasps my shoulders.
“What’s the matter? Did something happen to Faith?”
“Not yet,” I bite out.
He steps back, distanced by my anger.
“Well, it’s got to be something. You can’t imagine the kind of stories brewing in the heads of all the reporters who watched you walk on in here just now.” Then his face changes, slipping easily into a boyish smile. “Or maybe you just couldn’t live another moment without seeing me in person.”
I swallow hard. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re testifying for Metz?”
I can’t help it, the way my voice breaks in the middle. I have the satisfaction of watching Ian start, and then, to my surprise, he begins to laugh. “Joan told you.” I nod. “She let on how uncooperative I happened to be?”
Then Ian reaches for me. “Mariah, I’m testifying for you.”
I sniff into his shirt. Even now, when I should hate him, I notice the scent of his skin.
Steeling myself, I draw away. “Well, you may not have noticed, but Malcolm Metz is not my lawyer.”
“That’s right. I went to him, made him think I’d give him examples to kingdom come about you being an unfit parent. When it’s my turn to testify in court, though, he’ll be in for a surprise, since my speech will be dramatically different.”
“But Joan–“
“I didn’t have a choice, Mariah. I can go over my testimony with Metz to his face and then get up on the stand and start speaking Swahili without it being a big deal. After all, I’m his witness, and it just means I’m not behaving properly. But if I lie to Joan Standish in a deposition and then get up in a court of law and say something entirely different, I’ll be committing perjury. I had to plead the fifth today–
repeatedly–because it keeps her from getting in trouble, and me from getting in trouble, and Metz from getting suspicious of me.”
I want to believe him; God, I do. “You would do this for me?”
Ian inclines his head. “I would do anything for you.”
This time when he takes me into his arms, I don’t resist. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?”
His hand strokes my back, gentling. “The less you know, the better. That way if it all blows up in my face, you won’t be caught in the explosion.” He kisses the corner of my mouth,
my cheek, my forehead. “You can’t tell Joan yet. If she finds out before the trial, she could get into a hell of a lot of trouble.”
In answer, I go up on my toes and kiss him. Shyly, at first; then I open my mouth on his, identifying coffee and something sweeter, like candy. Surely if Ian was lying to me, it would be evident. Surely if he was lying, I would have the good sense to see through him.
Like I did before? Closing my eyes, I firmly push away the thought of Colin and his indiscretions. I feel Ian’s heat rising between us, his hips pushing against mine.
With a gasp, he breaks away from me.
“Sugar, there’s a whole crowd of people out there waiting to see whether you’re gonna make it out of this trailer alive. And if we keep this up, I can’t make any promises.” He chastely kisses my brow and takes a deliberate step away, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“What?”
“You don’t look like you’ve been fighting with me, exactly.” Flushing, I smooth my hands over my hair and touch my fingertips to my lips.
Ian laughs. “Just look angry, and get back to the house fast. They’ll think you’re still nursing a powerful mad.”
He cups my cheek in his hand, and I turn my lips into his palm. “Ian … thanks.”
“Miz White,” he murmurs, “it’s my pleasure.”
Joan and my mother hover at the door and immediately surround me as I walk inside, making me think of circus performers who wait at the high rope ladder to make sure their companion on the trapeze returns to safety. “Good God,
Mariah,” Joan scolds. “What were you thinking?”
My mother doesn’t say a word. She stares at my mouth, red and kissed, and raises a brow.
“I wasn’t thinking,” I confess, and at least this much is true.
“What did you say to him?”
“To be polite to my attorney in the future,” I lie, staring Joan right in the eye,
“or else he’ll have to answer to me.”
A few minutes before Petra Saganoff and her film crew are due to arrive, I pull Faith aside into an alcove by the bathroom.
“You remember what we talked about?”
Faith nods solemnly. “No talk about God. At all. And there’s going to be a big camera,” Faith adds. “Like the ones outside.”
“That’s right.”
“And I can’t call Petra Saganoff the B word.”
“Faith!”
“Well, you called her that.”
“I was wrong.” I sigh, thinking that if I survive this day, I will never complain again in my life. Through Joan, I’ve arranged to have Petra Saganoff in to film what she calls “B-roll”–background footage of Faith playing and of us just being us in our house, that she’ll then go off and record over with her own narrative,
before airing the segment on Hollywood Tonight!
Joan made sure that Saganoff signed a release about what she is allowed to film and what she isn’t, but I worry about her visit all the same. Although I think Faith will be able to act normally for a half hour, this could backfire … something Joan has pointed out to me ever since I suggested this exclusive. Our lives haven’t exactly been predictable lately. What if Faith starts bleeding again?
What if she forgets, and starts talking to God?
What if Petra Saganoff makes us all look like fools?
“Mommy,” Faith says, touching my arm.
“It’ll be okay. God’s taking care of it.”
“Excellent,” I murmur. “We’ll make sure to give her a good seat.”
The doorbell rings. I pass my mother on the way to answer it.
“I still don’t like this. Not a bit.”
“Neither do I,” I say, scowling at her.
“But if I don’t say something, people are going to assume the worst.” I pull open the door and fix a smile on my face. “Ms.
Saganoff, thank you so much for coming.”
Petra Saganoff, primed and in person, is even more attractive than she is on television. “Thanks for the invitation,” she says.
With her are three men, whom she introduces as a cameraman, a sound man, and a producer. She does not make eye contact with me; instead her gaze darts around the hall, looking for Faith.
“She’s just inside,” I say dryly. “Why don’t you follow me?”
We have agreed to allow her access to Faith’s playroom. What better way, I figure,
to show that a child is just a child, than to watch her with her dolls and puzzles and books? But by the time the cameraman and the producer have decided where to set the camera and arranged the lighting for the shot, nearly thirty minutes have passed. Faith’s getting fidgety; the cameraman even gives her a “gel”–a colored piece of plastic that he’s affixed to the lights with clothespins. She takes it and peers through it, screening her world yellow, but I can tell that she’s reached the end of her patience.
At this rate, Faith will be ready to leave her toys and go somewhere else by the time Petra’s just getting started.
I am thinking of the time Ian filmed Faith at my mother’s stress test, of how even with limits in place, there is still so much that can go wrong –when suddenly a fuse blows. “Ah, damn it,” the cameraman says. “Circuits are overloaded.”
Another ten minutes until we fix the fuse. By now Faith is whining.
The cameraman turns to the producer. “You want continuous time code or time of day?” Then the sound man holds up a white card in front of Faith’s face. “Give me some tone,” the cameraman says, and a few moments later,
“Speed.” The producer looks at Petra Saganoff. “Whenever you’re ready.”
When filming begins, I’m on the floor helping Faith play with a felt board. As per Joan’s instructions, I don’t talk to Petra or the camera; I do only what I would normally be doing with Faith. I try to keep Faith’s attention from the little red light on top of the camera, a place she seems to want to fix her gaze. Petra watches from the corner.
“I’m hungry,” Faith says, and I realize it’s already lunchtime.
“Come on. We’ll go into the kitchen.”
Well, that creates a quandary. Technically we haven’t filmed for thirty minutes, but the crew is off limits to the rest of the house. I suggest that the crew take a break and continue filming after Faith eats. Graciously, I invite Petra into the kitchen.
“You have a nice place here, Mrs. White,”
she says, the first words she’s really addressed to me since her arrival.
“Thank you.” I reach into the refrigerator and pull out the peanut butter and jelly, set it on the table–Faith likes to spread her own sandwiches.
“I imagine this has been hard for you,”
Petra says, and then smiles at the expression on my face. “Want to frisk me? See if I’m wearing a mike?”
“No, of course not.” Joan’s ultimate command: Keep your cool. I choose my words carefully, sure that the voice-over narrative Saganoff does will somehow come back to whatever conversation we are about to have. “It has been difficult,” I admit. “As you’ve probably noticed, regardless of what the people outside think,
Faith’s just a little girl. That’s all she wants to be.”
Behind Petra’s back, I see Faith holding up her palm. She’s spread jelly all around the Band-Aid, so that it looks as if she’s oozing blood, and she’s waving her hand in the air and silently pretending to moan.
My mother, catching my look, rushes over to Faith and wipes the jelly off her hand with a paper towel, firmly waggling a finger in her face in warning. I focus my attention on Petra again and smile brightly. “What was I saying?”
“That your daughter’s just like any other little girl.
But, Mrs. White, there are a lot of people who’d disagree with you.”
I shrug. “I can’t tell them what to think.
But I don’t have to believe what they believe either. First and foremost, Faith is my daughter.
Plain and simple, and whatever else is going on really has nothing to do with us.” Proud of myself, I stop while I’m ahead. Even Joan couldn’t find fault with that last statement; I almost wish the camera had been rolling.
I take a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator. “Would you like some lunch, Ms.
Saganoff?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
For years afterward, I will never be able to figure out what made me say what I say next. It bursts out of me like a belch, and leaves me just as embarrassed. “No trouble at all,” I joke.
“We’re just having loaves and fishes.”
For a single, horrifying moment, Petra Saganoff stares at me as if I’ve grown another head. Then she breaks into laughter, steps up to the counter, and offers to help.
November 24, 1999 On Wednesday, Hollywood Tonight! runs teasers, promising an inside look at the White household: “Home with an Angel.”
To my surprise, I begin to get nervous about the broadcast. I do not know, after all, what Saganoff is going to say about us. And millions of people are going to hear it, no matter what.
At six o’clock, we eat dinner. At six-thirty, I make a bowl of microwave popcorn. By twenty to seven, my mother, Faith,
and I are sitting on the couch, waiting for Peter Jennings to stop talking so that Hollywood Tonight! will come on. “Oh, shoot,” my mother says, patting her chest. “I left my glasses at home.”
“What glasses?”
“My glasses. You know, the ones I need to see.”
I raise a brow. “You were wearing them this afternoon.
They’re probably in the kitchen.”
“I wasn’t wearing them; you’re mistaken. I clearly remember leaving them on the kitchen counter in my house.” She turns to me. “Mariah, you know how I hate driving in the dark. You have to get them for me.”
“Now?” I ask, incredulous. “I can’t leave when this show’s about to go on.”
“Oh, please. My house is five minutes away, even less. You’ll be back before the news is over. And if you aren’t, you can always turn on my TV and watch, too.”
“Why can’t you just pull a chair up close to the television set?”
“Because she’ll hurt her eyes,” Faith pipes in. “That’s what you always tell me.”
Frustrated, I press my lips together. “I cannot believe you’re making me do this.”
“If you hadn’t complained to begin with, you’d be back by now.”
I throw up my hands and grab my purse,
speeding out of the driveway so quickly that the reporters don’t have time to jump in their cars and follow me. I rip through the streets of New Canaan until I reach my mother’s house.
Not only has she forgotten her glasses,
she’s left the light on in the kitchen, as well.
I unlock the door and step inside and see Ian.
“What … what are you doing here?”
He smiles, reaches for my hands. “A little birdie gave me the key.”
I shake my head. “A little birdie about yea high, fifty-something, with a blond bob? I can’t believe it.”
Ian slides his arms around my waist. “She wanted to play fairy godmother, Mariah.
Don’t ruin it for her.”
I move around, shutting curtains, locking the door, checking to make sure that no telltale car lights are hovering outside waiting for me.
Ian’s car is nowhere to be seen. “But I have to get back home … the show …”
“It’s on in the other room. Your mama came to the trailer yesterday and asked me if I would mind coming down here, watching it with you. I guess she figured you might want some moral support.”
“She could have given me moral support,”
I say.
Ian looks affronted. “But it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”
That brings me
up short. “Are you telling me that my mother … that she wants us …”
He touches my hair. “She’s heard you talking to me at night, on the phone. And she said that you deserve a little bit of happiness about now.”
He grins at me. “She also told me to tell you that she’ll put Faith to bed, which sounds like she’s certainly giving us her blessing, in addition to her house.” Twining his fingers with mine, he leads me into the living room, where the anchors of Hollywood Tonight! have just appeared on screen.
I am barely aware of Ian settling beside me on the couch as the television fills with pictures of my home, my daughter. Petra Saganoff’s rich voice seems oddly out of place, superimposed on the scene of Faith arranging figures on her felt board. “For weeks now we’ve heard of the miracles brought to pass by this little girl, Faith White.” The scenes cut away to pictures of the hospital,
where Petra mentions my mother’s resurrection, and to a close-up of the infant with AIDS who had played in our yard. Then Faith is on the floor of the playroom again, but this time I’m with her.
“Don’t you look fine on the small screen,” Ian whispers.
“Sssh.”
Petra continues. “Perhaps the greatest miracle, however, is the way Faith’s mother,
Mariah White, is struggling to keep a level head and a loving home for her daughter in spite of the maelstrom just outside their doors.”
“Oh,” I gasp, a smile breaking over my face even as tears come to my eyes. “Oh,
Ian, did you hear?”
He opens his arms, and I launch into them,
laughing and crying and so very, very relieved. I am not listening to Hollywood Tonight! anymore; it fades in the wake of Ian’s hands on my shoulders and back, pulling me even closer.
Cradling his face between my palms, I kiss him deeply, until I am lying flush against him on the couch and breathing just as hard as he is.
He unbuttons my shirt and presses his lips to the skin revealed at my throat. “I like the effect this show has on you.”
He is teasing, but I have moved past that point.
I want to feel him, take him, celebrate him. I am shaking as I lock my hands behind his neck.
Sensing the change in me, Ian draws back enough to look into my eyes. “I have missed you so,”
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