Keeping Faith Read online

  “What about her?”

  “Is she all right?”

  Without taking my eyes off him, I nod.

  “No thanks to you.”

  Is it my imagination, or does Ian Fletcher actually blush? “Yeah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have …” He hesitates,

  then shakes his head.

  “Shouldn’t have what?”

  His eyes are bright and burning; they hold me.

  “I just shouldn’t have. That’s all.”

  “An apology from Ian Fletcher? I ought to get this on tape.” But the next moment he is gone, and the only sign he’s been there at all are the red embers of his cigar at my feet.

  October 4, 1999 The next day I go to the hospital, where Dr.

  Weaver plans to test my mother’s heart again. To my shock, I find her waiting in the lounge on the patient floor with Ian Fletcher. “Mariah,”

  she says, as if we are all getting together for tea. “This is Mr. Fletcher.”

  I grip Faith’s hand so tightly she yelps. “We’ve met. Would you excuse us for a moment?” I pull my mother aside, Faith in tow. “Do you want to tell me why he’s here?”

  “Calm down, Mariah. I swear, you’re headed for a heart attack yourself. I invited Mr.

  Fletcher–” she pauses, smiles at him and nods, “–s that he can get his story and then get the heck out of our lives. Let him film whatever he wants; I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. “What makes you think he’s not going to label you as some kind of zombie or vampire and stick around anyway?”

  “Because I know.”

  “Oh, great. Well, that clears it all up for me.” I tighten my hold on my daughter.

  “Faith doesn’t want him here either.”

  “She’s reacting to your vibes, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t have vibes. There are no such thing as vibes.”

  “There’s no such thing as God either, right?” My mother smiles innocently.

  “All right,” I say. “This is your dog-and-pony show. If you want Ian Fletcher here, it’s your business. But he’s not speaking to me or to Faith, and I’m not setting one foot in that examination room unless you make that clear to him.”

  Ian Fletcher huddles with his camera crew and executive producer in the corner of the examination room. He promises to limit his investigation to my mother and smugly produces her signed consent form, as well as one from the hospital to film, when I challenge him on it. He orders gurneys moved and lighting arranged and scowls when I move Faith away from the scope of the camera. Me, I stand beside a hospital administrator there to oversee the filming, and we both play watchdog. When Fletcher motions his cameraman to lean in over the doctor’s shoulder for a close-up of the medical chart, I interrupt.

  “That’s confidential.”

  “As is this entire procedure, Miz White. Your mama did put her signature on a contract that said we could film with a handheld unit to our satisfaction.”

  “I don’t care about your satisfaction.”

  Ian Fletcher looks at me and smiles slowly. “Pity,” he says.

  I walk away, wondering what had happened to the man who was so solicitous the night before. Is this his television persona, as opposed to his private one?

  With my arms crossed, I watch as Ian Fletcher’s cameraman zooms in on my mother’s cardiogram and stress test. “Mrs. Epstein,”

  Dr. Weaver says finally, “you have the constitution of an eighteen-year-old. You may even outlive me.” He turns to Ian, clearly tickled by these fifteen minutes of fame. “You know, I’m a man of science, Mr. Fletcher. But there’s no scientific explanation, short of a cardiac transplant, to explain the dramatic change between Mrs. Epstein’s routine blood-pressure checks and stress-test results during her physical a month ago versus today. Not to mention, of course, the phenomenon of …

  resuscitation.”

  A slow gratification spreads through me, partly because my mother’s health has been validated, partly because it feels good to beat Ian Fletcher. I glance at him in triumph, just in time to see him whisper to the cameraman, who turns his body so that the video camera is no longer focused on my mother but behind her–on Faith.

  She’s sitting in the corner, coloring on a prescription pad. “No,” I whisper, and then I spring into action. “She is not your subject!”

  I shout, moving between the cameraman and my daughter, filling up his field of vision so that he stumbles back. “You give me that tape! You give it to me right now!”

  I reach for the camera, but the man holds it over his head. “Jesus, Mr. Fletcher,” he says, appealing for help. “Get her off me!”

  Ian Fletcher steps forward, palms raised.

  “Miz White,” he soothes, “take it easy now.”

  I round on him. “Don’t you tell me what to do.” From the corner of my eye, I see the cameraman still recording. “Make him shut the damn thing off!”

  Ian nods slightly, and the cameraman lowers the camera. The tension drains from my body, leaving me rubbery. I move away from Faith, shaking, and look up to find my mother,

  Ian Fletcher, the hospital administrator,

  and the doctor all staring at me, speechless.

  “No,” I manage, then clear my throat.

  “I said no.”

  After Fletcher leaves, a nurse takes Faith to get a sticker, leaving me alone with my mother as she dresses. “It’s my fault,” she says. “I thought if I invited Fletcher, we would get rid of him faster.”

  “No such luck,” I murmur.

  We wait quietly for Faith to return,

  thoughts running our own circles of guilt.

  “Mariah, you know what they say about dying?”

  I look at her. “What?”

  “About the bright light and all. The tunnel.”

  She picks at a cuticle on her thumb,

  suddenly unable to look at me. “It’s not like that.”

  I swallow, my mouth dry as a desert.

  “No?”

  “I didn’t see a light. I didn’t see angels. I saw my mother.” She turns to me,

  her eyes bright. “Oh, Mariah. Do you know how long it’s been? Twenty-seven years since I’ve seen her. It was a gift, you know, to be able to look at all the things that I’ve already forgotten–the way her nails were bitten down and the color of the roots that had grown out past the hair dye … even the lines on her face. She smiled at me and told me that I couldn’t come yet.”

  My mother unexpectedly laces her fingers through mine. The older we’ve grown, the less we’ve touched. As a child I’d crawled into her lap; as a teenager I shied from her hand when it tried to straighten my collar or fix my hair; as an adult I found even a quick good-bye embrace too maudlin, too full of things we did not yet want to say. “I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father,” she whispers. “Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don’t you think?”

  Faith returns with four stickers covering her shirt. It is decided that she’ll wait with my mother in the hospital lobby while I move the car from the faraway lot to short-term parking.

  I am at the edge of the lot when I hear footsteps. “I’m always telling you I’m sorry,” Ian Fletcher says, falling in beside me.

  “That’s because you’re always doing reprehensible things,” I answer. “I want that tape.”

  “You know I can’t give it to you. But you have my word that I won’t use any shots that include Faith.”

  “Your word,” I snort. “Like you gave me your word you wouldn’t film her in the first place.”

  “Look, I shouldn’t have filmed her without your permission. I already said that.”

  I start walking.

  “Hey. Hey!” He grabs my arm as I start to leave. “Can you just hang on a second?”

  Releasing me quickly, as if he’s been burned,

  he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

&
nbsp; “I want to tell you something. I don’t believe your claims about your daughter–alleged resurrection included–and I’m still going to prove you wrong. But I respect what you did in there.”

  He clears his throat. “You’re a good mother.”

  My jaw drops. I realize that lately I’ve been so busy flying by the seat of my pants and protecting Faith, I haven’t had time to wonder whether I’m doing it right. This man,

  this horrible man who’s barreled–uninvited–

  into our life, this man who does not know me from Eve, has imagined me as the person I’ve always wanted to be–a fiercely loyal lioness,

  a natural mother.

  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Certainly I know better than most that circumstances can turn you into someone you’ve never been before. I think of ordinary women who’ve moved two-ton cars to save pinned toddlers, of mothers who step in front of a bullet heading for their child in a move as easy as breathing. Maybe I’m one of them now. But I’d willingly return to second-guessing myself if it meant that Faith would go back to normal.

  “Mr. Fletcher?” I wait until he is looking right at me, expecting a thank-you, and then I slap him as hard as I can across the face.

  Keeping Faith

  SIX

  He that is not with me is against me.

  –Luke 1123 October 6, 1999 Ian’s grandmother had been a dyed-in-the-wool Southern belle who wore her religion like a Kevlar vest. “Thank God I’m a Christian woman,” she’d say, her litany dragged out for show when she found out that her husband had left her for the Jolly Donut waitress, or when she got word that the estate had been sold out beneath her to make way for a J. C. Penney store. And then, when God didn’t quite come through for her, she’d sneak out the bottle of bourbon she kept in the tank of the downstairs toilet and take up His slack.

  The Southern Baptist miasma in which Ian had been raised was a far piece from Yankee skepticism. Down South, communities were built around their churches. In some places still,

  religion had Southerners by the throat, and a man’s worth was judged by what house of God he frequented. Truth be told, Ian feels considerably more at home with the Yankees, for whom religion is an afterthought, rather than a staple of living. In the North there is room for doubt …

  or so Ian had thought, until he saw the reaction to Millie Epstein’s passing and subsequent revival.

  He has, through an inside source, managed to review Millie Epstein’s charts. Three distinct medical professionals signed the woman off as dead. And yet Ian himself saw her hale and hearty just days ago.

  His ratings are climbing again, which will last about as long as an ice cube in July, unless he manages to add fuel to the fire. Fuel that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming from the Millie Epstein angle. He buries his head in his hands and considers his next move. One of the things he’s learned is that there are skeletons in everyone’s closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover. He, of all people, should know.

  Allen McManus has just unwrapped his Twinkie when the personal line on his phone begins to ring. “Yeah?” he growls, picking up the receiver. He’s told his wife not to call him at work. Christ, it’s the only place he gets a little peace.

  “Do you know about Lazarus?”

  The voice is low, disguised. Certainly not his wife’s. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Do you know about Lazarus?” the voice repeats. “Who else had something to gain?”

  “Look, buddy, I don’t know what–” He hears a sharp click and a dial tone.

  “Lazarus. What the fuck.”

  It must be a Halloween prank, Halloween being just around the corner and everyone knowing, by virtue of Allen’s byline, that he writes the obits.

  Certainly if some joker is going to bring up the idea of raising the dead, the call will be forwarded to Allen. He has just dismissed it from his mind when a fax begins to come in on the Obituary Department line. With a sigh, he walks over to the machine–

  probably some celeb whose passing was picked up on the AP wire–and squints at the grainy picture of a woman beneath the banner of The New Canaan Chronicle, wherever the hell that is.

  WOMAN DIES; COMES BACK TO LIFE.

  Lazarus.

  Allen sits back down. He wishes he could remember what the Bible says, exactly, about Lazarus. Then again, he doesn’t know if he’s ever really read that story in the Bible. He leans across the aisle toward a colleague. “Barb, you got a Bible?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, sure, right next to my Wite-Ou. Why? You seen God?”

  “Forget it,” Allen scowls. New Canaan Chronicle. A nothing paper if he’s ever seen one. Yet here is this story about a woman who came back to life right in that little pissant town.

  New Canaan was where that lady psychiatrist was from, too.

  Allen skims the article a second time.

  Buried in the fourth paragraph–there it is–

  Epstein’s granddaughter … has been communicating with God.

  Well, for Christ’s sake. How many other kids in that town would fit Dr. Keller’s description? Allen considers what this means–a little girl who sees and speaks to God, who suddenly can perform miracles. That’s a front page on the New Hampshire section for sure.

  Who else had something to gain?

  That’s what the caller said. Resurrection is certainly in Millie Epstein’s best interests … unless it wasn’t a resurrection at all.

  Allen glances at the article again. That Ian Fletcher guy is hanging around, which has to mean that he, too, senses something isn’t quite right. Who,

  then, would benefit from a mock miracle? The kid, for one. But kids that age always have managers to promote their business.

  In this case, it would probably be her mother.

  October 7, 1999 Just after five in the morning Mariah hears the front door open. She bolts out of bed and tears down the stairs. Grabbing up an umbrella from the stand in the front parlor, she brandishes it like a bat and searches the shadows for an intruder. “Come on!” she yells, heart pounding. “You want pictures? You want an exclusive? Show yourself, you bastard!”

  But nothing moves, nobody stirs. Cursing,

  she tosses the umbrella down and through the sidelight catches a glimpse of Faith,

  barefoot and in her nightgown, pushing a doll stroller across the grass.

  Mariah glances at the small entourage at the edge of the road. The cult from Arizona remains blessedly asleep on the far side of the stone wall; the reporters who’ve waited for an appearance by Faith during the day are conspicuously absent. In fact, the only person watching Faith is Ian Fletcher, haggard and grim,

  standing in the doorway of the Winnebago.

  “Hi, Mommy.” Faith waves. “Want to play with me?”

  Mariah swallows the protest she is about to make. “Your feet … aren’t you cold?”

  “No, it’s nice out.” Faith bends toward the stroller. “Isn’t it?” she coos, and tucks a blanket around her doll.

  Except the doll is moving. Its tiny brown fists beat at the morning fog, and below the curly cap of its hair is a wide, circular sore.

  Faith lifts the baby out of the stroller and cuddles him to her cheek. “What a good boy.”

  It is then that Mariah notices a slight woman hidden behind an ash tree at the edge of the driveway. She has a scarf wrapped around her head, and her eyes never leave the infant, although she makes no move to get him back from Faith.

  Faith puts the baby back in her toy stroller and moves him to the doll high chair that she’s dragged out to the front lawn, where she pretends to feed him pieces of toy fruit. The baby smiles and kicks his feet against the legs of the high chair. He laughs so loud that a photographer awakens and points a camera at Faith, taking pictures with alarming speed.

  Mariah, jolted out of her stupor, steps off the porch and strides toward her daughter.

  “Sweetie, I think we have to go in now.”

  Fait
h squints at the sun pushing against the horizon. “Oh. It was just getting fun.”

  Mariah touches her hair. “I know. Maybe we’ll come out later.” As she says this, her gaze roams across the sparse crowd and locks on Ian Fletcher’s impassive face. In all this time he has not moved, has done nothing more insidious than observe. Mariah forces her attention back to Faith. “I think you ought to bring him back to his mother now.”

  Faith carefully lifts the baby and presses her lips against the sore on his forehead. She walks to the ash tree and gives the infant to his sobbing mother. The woman clearly wants to say something to Faith, but she cannot catch her breath to do so. Faith touches her lightly on the hand, where her fingers cradle the baby’s head. “Bring him back to play, okay?”

  The woman nods and wipes her eyes. Faith slips her hand into her mother’s, and Mariah is overwhelmed by the sensation of holding on to someone she does not know at all. How can it be that she grew Faith inside her, and felt her push her way into the world, and gave her a home for seven years,

  without knowing that this was coming?

  She is about to step onto the porch with her daughter when she sees Ian Fletcher brazenly walking up the driveway. He’s brought back the plastic doll stroller and the little feeding chair, as well as the small basket of toy fruits and vegetables. Mariah takes the toys from him.

  “Excuse us,” she says stiffly.

  He falls back, regarding Faith. “I wish I could.”

  After the unexpected appearance of Faith White, Ian returns to the Winnebago. He is even more sure of his suppositions now that he’s watched her play like any other seven-year-old kid. Clearly, the ringleader is the mother. The moment she showed up, the kid stopped–the healer came to heel. For whatever reason, Mariah White is the mastermind behind this show.

  He’s seen charlatans before, men and women gifted at perpetuating a hoax. Usually they’re in it for the money, or the fame. And that’s the one thing that doesn’t quite add up for Ian. There’s something about Mariah’s eyes that makes him think of a victim, instead of a swindler. As if she’d really rather this whole thing not be happening.