Keeping Faith: A Novel (21 page)

Trying to figure out his next course of action,

he pulls his rosary from his pocket and absentmindedly fingers it. “Oh,” Faith breathes. “That’s pretty.”

He stares at the polished beads. “Would you like to see it?”

Faith nods, slipping the rosary over her head like a necklace. “Is this how it goes?”

“No. It’s for praying to God.” At Faith’s blank look, Rourke adds, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name.

…” He is interrupted by Faith’s laugh.

“You’ve got that wrong.”

“Got what wrong?”

Faith rolls her eyes. “God’s a mother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A lady. God’s a lady.”

Rourke’s face reddens. A female God?

Absolutely not. His head swings toward Mrs.

White, who raises her eyebrows and shrugs.

Father MacReady, on the other hand, is the very picture of innocence. “Oh,” MacReady says. “Did I forget to mention that?”

Just after 10:00 P.m., the doorbell rings.

Hoping not to wake Faith, I scramble down the stairs and yank open the door to find myself staring at Colin.

He looks terrible. His hair is flattened on one side, as if he’s been asleep on it;

his raincoat is wrinkled; his eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep. His mouth is a thin slash, pinched tight with disapproval.

He glances over his shoulder at the vans and cars parked in the cornfield across the road,

illuminated by a full moon. Faith stumbles sleepily down the stairs and skids to a stop beside me, her arms wrapped around my waist.

When Colin sees her, he crouches and reaches out a hand. Faith hesitates, then dashes behind me. “What in the name of God,” he says tightly, “have you done to my daughter?”

“Actually,” Mariah answers, “it’s funny you should put it that way.”

Colin uses every bit of his self-control to keep from pushing her aside so that he can get his hands on his daughter. Until he got here, he did not really know what he would find. Certainly those trashy telemagazines bent the truth, in the same way the National Enquirer supposedly stuck Elizabeth Taylor’s head on Heather Locklear’s body. Colin thought maybe he’d find that Faith had burned her palm on the stove. Maybe she’d fallen off her bike and needed stitches. There were a multitude of ways to explain a bad camera shot of a little girl’s bleeding hands.

But Colin had reserved a coach ticket on the first flight out of Las Vegas, fought with Jessica over coming, traveled all day by plane and rental car, only to arrive at the driveway of his former home and find it blockaded by the police, lined with shrines and tents and hordes of curious people.

“I’m coming in,” he says tightly, and Faith lets go of her mother and skitters upstairs.

“I don’t think so. This is my house, now.”

Colin needs a minute to pull himself together.

Mariah, telling him no? He shoves forward,

only to have her stop him with a bracing hand.

“I mean it, Colin. I’ll call the police if I have to.”

“Go ahead!” he yells with frustration.

“They’re just at the goddamned end of the goddamned driveway!”

He is tired, crabby, and overwhelmed. When he set their divorce in motion, he had not thought twice about giving custody of Faith to Mariah.

He’d never assumed that she would balk when he was ready to introduce Faith to the new mix of his life. She was fair, and when she wasn’t, she was a pushover.

Was. “Look,” he says calmly. “Can you just tell me what this is about Faith’s hands?”

Mariah looks down at her bare feet.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Make it easy.”

She hesitates, then pushes the door wider so that he can walk inside.

After tucking Faith in again, I explain it all to Colin–the imaginary friend, the medicines for psychosis, the steady parade of priests and rabbis, the resurrection of my mother. For a moment he just stares at me; then he begins to laugh. “You had me going there for a while.”

“I’m not kidding, Colin.”

“Right. You really think that Faith has some hotline to God.” He laughs again. “She’s always had a hell of an imagination, Rye, you know that. Remember the time she got the whole nursery-school class to believe that when they went outside for recess, they’d be in Disney World?”

I’m having trouble concentrating.

There’s an anger brewing just below the surface in me, resentment that Colin feels he can walk back in here and issue commands, when he clearly relinquished that right months ago. But there are other emotions, too. Just being in the same room with Colin still feels like a homecoming, as if my body knows the right of it and is reaching for him before I can convince my mind to do the same. A tornado starts in the pit of my belly–one that whirls with the assumption that he’s come back for good and sucks my good sense right down through its center.

I watch the play of Colin’s mouth, listen to him call me by my nickname, and wonder if I am going to live through being this close to him knowing that he no longer wants me.

“Whatever happened, it’s out of control. Do you think it’s normal that she can’t go to school? That there are a bunch of people sleeping under the rhododendrons who think our daughter–” He snaps his fingers beneath my nose. “Hey … are you even listening to me?”

I stare at his long fingers. In spite of the fact that there was a divorce decree, Colin is still wearing a wedding band.

Then I realize it isn’t the one I gave him.

“Oh,” Colin says, coloring. “T.” He covers the ring with the palm of his other hand. “I,

um, got married. To Jessica.”

When I shake my head, my vision of Colin reconfigures. He is no god, no tender memory, but simply someone I will never understand.

“You married Jessica,” I repeat slowly.

“Yes.”

“You married Jessica.”

“Rye, we never would have made it work. I am sorry truly, truly sorry for that.”

My anger returns full force. “We never could have made it work? How could you know that, Colin,

when I was the only one willing to try?”

“Yes, you were. But, Rye–I wasn’t.”

He reaches for my hand, but I pull it away and tuck it between my knees. “You were willing to try again, Colin. Just not with me.”

“No, not with you.” He looks away,

embarrassed. “That’s not important right now.”

“It’s not? God, what could be more important?”

“Faith. It’s not about you this time. You always twist it so it’s your problem, your issue.”

“It was about me!” I cry. “How can you say Greenhaven wasn’t about me?”

“Because we’re not talking about Greenhaven!

Jesus Christ, we’re talking about our daughter!” He rakes his hand through his hair.

“It’s been eight years, for God’s sake. I did what I thought I had to do. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me for that?”

“Apparently not,” I whisper.

“I know,” Colin says after a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

He holds out his arms, and I move into them.

With detachment I marvel at how you can know someone’s body so well, even after a separation, like a land you visited as a child and return to years later, with an eye toward the unfamiliar but a feeling of confidence in your footing. “I never meant to hurt you,” he murmurs into my hair.

I plan to say the same to him, but it comes out all wrong. “I never meant to love you.”

Surprised, Colin draws back, a rueful smile on his face. “That’s the hell of it,

huh?” He touches my cheek. “You know I’m right, Rye. Faith doesn’t deserve this.”

It strikes me then why he has come: not to make his peace with me, but to take my daughter away.

Suddenly I remember how, years ago, I would sometimes wake him in the middle of the night and ask him a ridiculous question: “What do you like best about Cracker Jacks–the peanuts or the popcorn?” “If you were going to be a day of the week, which one would it be?” And others, as if I expected to be a contestant on the Newlywed Game. Colin would pull a pillow over his head, ask why I needed to know. I see now that I was storing away the answers, like a squirrel.

To give myself a modicum of credit: I did not know that Colin was sleeping with another woman, but I did know that he likes the yolks broken in his eggs. That the smell of wallpaper paste makes him dizzy. That given the choice to learn a new language, he would choose Japanese.

Now Jessica will learn these things. Jessica will have my husband, my daughter.

Faith didn’t deserve this, Colin had said.

And I think, Neither did I.

The thought makes my heart catch–

what if I couldn’t keep Faith?

Suddenly I feel strong enough to move a mountain. To single-handedly sweep away all the people who have stolen my privacy. To carry Faith to where nobody has the chance to touch her in passing or snag pilled wool from her sweaters or sort through her discarded trash.

I am strong enough to admit that maybe I’m doing all right as a mother, all things considered. And I am certainly strong enough to admit that, for the first time in my life, I wish Colin would just go away.

“You know,” I say, “if Faith told me,

without a doubt, that the sky was orange, I’d entertain the notion. If she says so, there’s a reason for it, and I’m going to listen.”

Colin stills. “You believe she’s talking to God, and raising the dead, and all of this garbage? That’s crazy.”

“No, it’s not. And neither was I.” I stand up.

“You made a decision to give me custody of Faith. You have a visit coming up at Thanksgiving. But until then I don’t want to hear from you, Colin.”

I walk to the front door and hold it open,

although it takes a moment for Colin to get over the shock of being dismissed. He moves briskly to the door. “You won’t hear from me,” he says softly. “You’ll hear from my lawyer.”

In spite of my newfound bravado, I tremble for hours after Colin leaves. I turn on all the lights downstairs and walk from room to room, trying to find a comfortable place. Finally I sit down at the dining-room table, gingerly playing with the shutters on the model farmhouse I made years ago. It isn’t accurate now. The wallpaper in the master bath has changed, and Faith has a bed instead of a crib, and–of course–it is now a residence for two instead of three.

I’m furious at Colin for what he’s done,

what he’s threatened. My rage propels me up the stairs, down the hall, to the doorway of Faith’s room, where I hover like a ghost. Did he mean it? Would he fight to have Faith taken away?

He would win; this I know. I don’t stand a chance. And if it is not Colin who comes for Faith, it will be someone else: another official from the Catholic Church … the tabloid-Tv reporter whose national coverage brought Colin running … or the thousands of others who also saw the broadcast and want a piece of her.

I tiptoe into the room and stretch out beside Faith on the narrow bed, staring down at the slope of her cheek and the spiral of her ear. How is it that you never realize how precious something is until you are about to lose it?

Faith shifts, turns, and blinks at me.

“I smell oranges,” she says sleepily.

“It’s my shampoo.” I smooth the covers over her. “Go back to sleep.”

“Is Daddy still here?”

“No.”

“Is he coming back tomorrow?”

I stare at Faith and make up my mind. It is not what I want to do, but I don’t really have a choice. “He can’t,” I say. “Because you and I are going away.”

Keeping Faith

EIGHT

Ian Fletcher is a man destined for hell,

if ever there was one–unless he manages to prove it doesn’t exist before he gets there.

–Op-ed page,

The New York Times, August 10,

October 19, 1999 “For the record,” Millie says, “I’m against this.”

“I’m not,” Faith announces as Mariah zips her jacket. “I think it’s cool to be a spy.”

“You’re not a spy. You’re a sneak.”

Mariah pats down the placket of the zipper.

“You ready?”

She knows Faith is; she’s been ready since 6:00 A.m., when Mariah told her what was going to happen. Of course, she’d couched it in the vocabulary of suspense and adventure, so that Faith would feel more like a young Indiana Jones than a child being taken into hiding. And so far the escapade has lived up to Faith’s anticipation–stealing into the car with little more than a knapsack apiece, driving forty-five minutes to the mall, blending into the crowds to lose the two dogged reporters who’d tailed them there.

The reporters will no doubt stake out her Honda, waiting for the three of them to appear. But by the time Millie walks to the parking lot to drive the car back home, Mariah and Faith will already have changed clothes and met a taxi at an exit on the far side of the mall, headed toward the airport.

Now all she has to do is say good-bye.

Mariah glances at the mirror in the bathroom at Filene’s and catches her mother’s gaze.

Millie walks forward and puts her arm around Mariah’s waist. “You don’t have to let them chase you away,” she says softly.

“I’m not, Ma.” Mariah swallows the lump in her throat. “I’m getting a head start.”

She cannot stand the thought of leaving her mother behind–not only because of the recent heart trouble, but also for the simple fact that Millie is Mariah’s closest friend, as well as her mother. Then again, even Millie would agree–you do what you have to do to keep Faith. With it put that plainly, Mariah cannot let herself be steamrolled–again–by people and circumstances beyond her control.

She has not told Millie about Colin’s custody threat, nor has she mentioned where she plans to go. This way, when the lawyers get in touch with her … or the reporters, or Ian Fletcher–her mother will not be forced to lie. Mariah turns and throws her arms around her mother’s neck.

“I will call you. When I can, when I know it’s all right.”

Faith burrows between them. “Get dressed,

Grandma! We’re going to miss the taxi.”

Mariah touches Faith’s hair. “Honey,

Grandma has to stay here.”

“Here?”

“Well, not here. But at our house, to watch over … things.”

The words do not register. “Grandma has to come with us,” Faith insists.

Mariah has not told Faith this part of the plan, for exactly this reason; it is the one thing that will make her balk. “Faithele,” Millie says, crouching down, “there’s nothing I’d like more than to go with you in the taxi on your trip. But I can’t.”

“Because someone has to drive our car home,” she says after a moment. “But you’ll come later?”

Millie glances at Mariah. “You bet.”

She zips Faith’s spare clothes into the knapsack, then pulls the straps over her granddaughter’s arms. “Be good,” she adds, then kisses Faith on the forehead. She watches Mariah take Faith’s hand and lead her out of the bathroom, Faith turning at the last minute to blow a kiss. Then Millie sits down in an empty toilet stall, imagining a thousand things that could go wrong now that Mariah and Faith have run away, imagining a thousand things that could have gone wrong even if they hadn’t.

Malcolm Metz spreads his capable hands on the surface of his highly polished desk. “Let me get this straight, Mr. White. You voluntarily relinquished custody of your daughter ten weeks ago. And now you want her to move in with you and your new wife.”

Colin nods. He tries not to feel daunted by the offices of Walloughby, Krieger and Metz, but they were far less intimidating six months earlier when he retrofitted the entire place with electroluminescent exit signs.

Of course, back then he was only taking care of business. This visit is far more personal, and there’s much more at stake.

“That’s correct.” He assesses Metz slowly, from the man’s close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair to his Italian loafers. Known for his bulldozing drive to win,

Metz is something of a New Hampshire litigating legend.

The attorney taps the tips of his fingers together. “Why the change of heart?”

Colin feels the beginnings of a slow burn.

“Because my ex-wife is crazy? Because my daughter’s been turned against me? Because I’m worried about her welfare? Take your pick.”

Metz has heard it all before. As a matter of fact, he has a court appearance in less than two hours as the divorce attorney for a reputed Mafia wife, and he would much rather be in the executive washroom perfecting his demeanor for the cameras that are sure to be there. A custody case like this–well, he should be able to win it in his sleep.

“What has your ex-wife done to endanger your daughter?”

“What have you heard about the little girl who’s seeing God?”

Malcolm stops drumming his fingers on his desk. “That’s your kid?”

“Yeah. No.” Colin sighs. “Ah, shit.

I don’t even know anymore. There are a couple hundred people at the end of the driveway, and they all believe that Faith’s turned into some prophet, and her hands are bleeding and …

Christ.” He looks at the attorney. “This is not the little girl I left.”

Malcolm silently extracts a yellow pad from a drawer of his desk. The potential for media coverage of this case is extraordinary–

far beyond the narrow range of New Hampshire.

He uncaps a pen and decides to sink his teeth in. “You believe that you would be better able to serve the interests of this child. You believe that living with her mother, as it stands, is adversely affecting your daughter.” Colin nods. “Can you tell me why you didn’t believe these same things just four months ago?”

“Look, if I’m going to pay you a twenty-thousand-dollar retainer and five hundred dollars an hour over that, then I don’t have to explain anything. I want my daughter. I want her now. I heard that you could help me.

Period.”

Malcolm holds his client’s gaze for a moment. “You want full custody?”

“Yes.”

“At all costs?”

Colin does not have to ask what Metz means.

He knows that the surest way to prove himself the better parent is to make Mariah look worse.

By the time this is over, Mariah won’t lose only Faith. She’ll also have lost her self-respect.

He shifts uncomfortably. It is not what he wants to do, but he doesn’t really have a choice. Just as when he made the decision to have Mariah committed, the ends here justify the means.

Just as then, he is only concerned for the safety of someone he loves.

He has a painful flashback of the night Mariah tried to kill herself–the blood everywhere,

his name still bubbling on her lips. He forces himself to imagine Faith hiding when he appeared yesterday at the door. “I want my daughter back,” Colin repeats firmly, convincing himself.

“You do whatever it takes.”

Last Tuesday Ian Fletcher flew out of Manchester, a little airport trying to pretend it was several shades more cosmopolitan than it actually was. It was, in a word, a nightmare.

Not only was his flight to Kansas City delayed, but there was no Admiral’s Club to lounge in before the flight, meaning that he’d spent the better part of an hour hiding in a bathroom stall to avoid recognition. This week he was flying out of Boston. It meant a longer limo ride to the airport, but a considerably less stressful journey.

“Sir? What airline are you traveling?”

At the sound of the chauffeur’s voice, Ian leans forward. “American.” He gathers his briefcase as the limousine snakes into a spot at the curb, signs the credit-card receipt,

and hands the clipboard back to the driver without saying another word. Keeping his head low, he ducks to the right, toward the bank of elevators that he knows will take him to the private first-class passenger club, where he can wait in a secluded room until his flight is called.

Mariah stands in front of the departures board,

skimming the list of destinations. So many places;

how is she to pick? It is not as if one destination holds any edge over another–no matter where they wind up, they will be starting from scratch.

“Mom?” Faith asks, tugging at her arm.

“Can we go to Vegas?”

A smile tugs at Mariah’s mouth. “What do you know about Vegas?”

“Daddy went there once. You can push buttons, and money just comes flying out at you. I saw it on TV.”

“Well, it’s not quite like that. You have to be very, very lucky. And anyway, I don’t even see a flight to Las Vegas listed here.”

“So where are we going?”

Good question. Mariah smooths her hand over her purse, considering how much money she has inside.

Two thousand dollars in cash–God, she feels like a walking target. But she knows better than to leave a paper trail, and this was as much money as she could get out of a local bank on short notice. If they are frugal, she and Faith should be able to remain undetected for a little while at least. And if they manage to elude the media, maybe the interest in Faith will just die down.

Without a passport, she’s limited to the United States. Hawaii–she’s always wanted to go to Hawaii, but the tickets are sure to be phenomenally expensive and eat into their budget.

Mariah’s eyes run down the columns again.

There is a flight to Los Angeles at noon.

One to Kansas City, Missouri at eleven-fifteen.

She leads Faith to the line where they can purchase standby tickets, deciding that their destination, quite simply, is whatever plane leaves this airport first.

As they board, Mariah finds herself thanking God that the story about Faith has only just gone national, meaning that most people with whom they come in contact–the flight attendant, the nice man who offers to stuff their knapsacks into the overhead compartment–look at them and see a mother and her child,

instead of a pair of media fugitives.

Faith has only been on a plane twice before, once as a baby when her grandfather died and once when they all went to Washington D.c.,

for a family vacation. She bounces in her seat,

craning her neck to get a better peek at the first-class cabin, which they are seated directly behind. “What’s in there? How come the seats are a different color?”

“It’s where businessmen and people who have a lot of money sit. They pay more for those seats.”

“Why didn’t we pay for them?”

“Because …” Mariah throws an exasperated look in her daughter’s direction. “Just because,”

she says as the flight attendant unsnaps a blue curtain to shield the cabin from view.

“Final boarding call for Flight 5456 to Kansas City …”

Ian strides toward the gate and presents his boarding pass. “Mr. Fletcher,” the airline representative says, “I enjoy your show.”

He nods brusquely and hurries toward the plane, handing the flight attendant his coat and settling into his seat. “Good morning, Mr.

Fletcher. Can I get you something to drink before takeoff?”

“Bourbon, straight.”

There are three other passengers in first class,

a pain in the ass, but not a tragedy. It would have been worse if one of them had been seated beside him. The flight attendant returns with his liquor. This weekly flight, like everything else about his visits to Michael, is a routine. He sets down the glass and closes his eyes,

drifting into a dream in which cards fall red and then black, red and then black, in endless succession.

“I have to pee,” Faith announces.

Mariah sighs. The drink cart is directly behind them, blocking the route to the lavatories in the rear; there’s no way Faith will be able to hold it in until the flight attendants finish the beverage service. She eyes the blue curtain that leads to the first-class cabin. “Come here.”

She leads Faith through the short aisle strip quickly, hoping that she can get her into the little bathroom before a flight attendant busts them for trespassing. “Here,” she says, nearly hauling Faith into the cubicle. “Don’t forget to lock the door so the lights come on.” Then she leans against the humming wall of the plane, glances around first class.