Keeping Faith: A Novel (20 page)

Ian glances at his fist, still clutching the Globe article.

“Allen McManus,” the man says, holding out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you. I came here to continue the series, and saw the Winnebago, and … what can I say? I guess we’re all after the same story. Great minds think alike.”

Ian ignores the man’s hand. “And you’re not one of them.”

“But you–“

He grasps McManus’s fingers tightly in what would look like a handshake to a passerby,

while actually causing great pain. “I work alone,” Ian says through his teeth. “And if you ever suggest that I’m in any way affiliated with the bullshit you’re printing, I will find so many skeletons in your closet that your boss won’t let you write the alphabet, much less the obits.” Then, with great satisfaction,

he slams the door in the reporter’s face.

At age seven Constantine Christopher Andrews sewed bits of barbed wire into the linings of his clothes, figuring that the only way out of the neighborhood he’d been born in and would probably die in was to do enough penance for God to notice him. His mother, who never bothered to learn English after coming over on the boat from Sicily,

always assumed he’d become a priest–the premonition having something to do with a strawberry birthmark in the shape of the cross that clearly marked his belly upon birth. Constantine grew up hearing of his imminent ordination so often that he,

too, grew to accept it as fact.

He loved Catholicism. It was a weekly dose of color and gilt and grandeur in a piss-poor immigrant ghetto. His dedication was duly rewarded, and he moved up the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy to the point where, for the past fifteen years, he’s served as a bishop. He wanted to retire five years ago, but the Pope wouldn’t let him. It’s been so long since he’s mingled with grassroots Catholics–so long, in fact, since his religion has meant anything more than oiling the wheels in major fund-raising campaigns–that when Monsignor O’Shaughnessy calls with the story of an alleged stigmatic, he is momentarily thrown for a loop.

“What are we talking here?” he asks,

exasperated because taking this call means he’s going to be late to the Heritage Breakfast at the Italian Center, with some of the richest Catholic businessmen in Manchester. “Hands, feet,

sides?”

“As far as I know,” the monsignor says,

“hands only. Apparently the child is Jewish.”

“Well, that’s that. Let the rabbis take care of her.”

“They could. Except there’s already been press attention. According to Father MacReady, about three hundred practicing Catholics have visited the site.” He clears his throat. “There’s also the small matter of an alleged resurrection.”

“Press attention, you say?” Bishop Andrews considers. One of the phenomena he’s noticed as a member of the Catholic hierarchy is that donations to the Church get more frequent when the faith is promoted as a result of good PR.

If he reaches his fund-raising goal by December, perhaps he’ll be able to take a little time golfing in Scottsdale.

He wishes, not for the first time, that he were the bishop of a big city like Boston, rather than a small, poor diocese in southern New Hampshire. “I sent three candidates down to St. John’s this year. They ought to be able to spare us a seminary priest to look into the matter.”

“Very good, Your Excellency. I’ll let Father MacReady know.”

The bishop hangs up the phone and then places a call to the Rector of St. John’s Seminary in Boston, talking about the Celtics game for a minute before getting down to business with the same calculated charm he usually saves for glad-handing. It takes less than ten minutes for the rector to cough up a name, which Andrews writes on a slip of paper and routes to his assistant. By the time he leaves his office,

he’s thinking about whether he’ll have the waffles or the French toast, having completely erased the young girl with stigmata from his mind.

The way Faith knows it is not going to be a very good day is that her mother has made banana pancakes for breakfast. She likes pancakes, on the whole, but when the bananas hit the griddle they smell like feet, and the whole time she’s trying to swallow, she finds herself thinking of sweaty socks instead, which at breakfast is enough to make you throw up. She must have told her mother a gazillion times that she doesn’t like banana pancakes, but, like most things she says, it doesn’t stick, causing Faith to wonder if she’s really making noise when she speaks or if the volume is turned up only inside her head.

“Ma,” she says, sliding into place at the table, “I want something else.”

Without speaking, her mother sidles over and removes the banana pancakes. Faith’s jaw drops. Whenever her mother goes to the trouble of whipping out more than a cereal box for breakfast, it means that she’s put enough time and effort into the meal for Faith to eat whatever is on her plate, thank you very much. Faith watches her mother dump the pancakes into the garbage disposal and absentmindedly flip the switch.

“What am I supposed to eat?”

Her mother blinks at her. “Oh,” she says,

coming back to earth. “I don’t know. Oatmeal?”

Without waiting for Faith’s approval, she rips open a packet and dumps it into a bowl, then adds water from the Insta-Hot tap. Faith hears the bowl ring as her mother sets it down, and she sniffs.

Banana.

“I bet Daddy wouldn’t make me eat stuff that’s totally gross like this,” she mutters.

Her mother whips around. “What did you say?”

Faith lifts her chin. “I bet if I lived with Daddy, he wouldn’t make me eat this.”

Her mother’s eyes are droopy and red, and her voice is so soft that it hurts Faith just to listen to it. Immediately she feels as if she’s been kicked in the stomach. She watches her mother swallow hard, as though the banana oatmeal were stuck in her throat. “Do you want to live with Daddy?”

Faith bites her lip. She loves her father,

that much is true, but there is something different about her mother–something easier and more involved–and after all these years of living on the fringe of her mother’s life, Faith is not willing to give up a precious second.

“What I want,” Faith says carefully,

“is to stay here.”

It is worth it, the way her mother rushes the space between them to gather Faith in her arms. What is even better is that her mother sticks her elbow in the banana oatmeal. “Damn,” she says, and then blushes. “I guess I’d better get you something else.”

“I guess.”

She watches her mother rinse out her sleeve and wet a sponge. “I’m not very good at this,” she says as she begins to wipe down the table.

Globs of oatmeal spill over the edge, landing on Faith’s lap and the floor. She looks up at the way her mother’s hair curtains half of her face, at the little dimple in her cheek. As a toddler, Faith would touch that spot on her mother’s cheek and then wait for it to cave in when she grinned. She loved that, the way she could fall right into her mother’s smile.

“You’re doing great,” Faith says, and shyly rises off her seat to kiss the bow of her mother’s neck.

Father MacReady sneaks a glance at the priest in the passenger seat of his old Chevy and thinks that having a graduate degree in pastoral psychology isn’t what makes you an expert. Father Rourke, fresh from St. John’s Seminary, is still wet behind the ears. He’s so young that he probably wasn’t even born when Father MacReady was overseas in ‘nam. And being stuck in Boston, in seminary, only makes him an ivy-tower type. He wouldn’t know how to counsel a parishioner if one fell into his lap.

But of course Father MacReady doesn’t say anything of the sort. “Pastoral psychology,”

he says amiably, turning onto Mariah White’s road. “What made you get into that?”

Father Rourke crosses his leg, a Polarfleece sock and Birkenstock sandal peeking out from beneath his black trousers. “Oh, a gift for people, I guess. I would have been a psychiatrist, I suppose, if I hadn’t felt another calling.”

And the profound need to tell everyone about it.

“Well, I don’t know how much the rector told you about Faith White.”

“Not a lot,” Rourke says. “Just that I’m here to check out her mental state.”

“For the record, that’s been done. By lay psychiatrists.”

Rourke turns in his seat. “You do realize that the chance of this child’s being a true visionary is basically nonexistent?”

Father MacReady smiles. “Don’t you ever see a glass as half full?”

“If it’s a mind we’re talking about, half isn’t nearly as good as whole.”

Father MacReady parks in the field across from the Whites’ driveway, in between a camper and a group of elderly women on folding stadium chairs.

The seminary priest glances around, his jaw dropping. “Wow! She’s already got quite a following.”

They chat for a while with the policeman at the end of the driveway, another parishioner, thank the Lord, who easily lets Father MacReady pass when he says they’ve made an appointment to see Mrs. White.

“Have we?” Rourke asks as they walk up the driveway. “Made an appointment?”

“Not exactly.” Father MacReady approaches the front door and knocks, to find a small, elfin face peeking out at them from the sidelight. There is the sound of tumblers falling as a key is turned in a lock, and then the door swings open. “They’re better,” Faith says, holding up her hands for the priests’

perusal. “Look, I only need Band-Aids.”

Father MacReady whistles. “And they’re Flintstone Band-Aids. Very cool.”

Faith glances at the second priest and shoves her hands behind her back. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.” She suddenly remembers.

“Maybe we could talk to your mother, then.”

“She’s upstairs taking a shower.”

Rourke steps forward. “Father MacReady here was telling me how much he liked talking to you when you were in the hospital, and I was really looking forward to doing that, too.”

Father MacReady realizes Faith is wavering. Maybe there’s something to pastoral psychology after all. “Faith, your mother knows me. Surely she wouldn’t mind.”

“Maybe you’d better wait here till she comes down.”

Rourke turns to Father MacReady. “Well,

I don’t know what I’m going to do now with all those games I brought.”

Faith rubs her sleeve on the doorknob,

bringing it to a high polish. “Games?” she says.

Upstairs, I have just towel-dried my hair when I hear the sound of male voices.

“Faith!” I dress quickly, my stomach knotting as I race downstairs.

I find her sitting on the floor with Father MacReady and another unfamiliar priest, using a green crayon to circle answers on what is clearly a psychological-assessment test.

Gritting my teeth, I make a mental note to call the chief of police and have him send out a Protestant patrolman. “Faith, you weren’t supposed to answer the door.”

“It’s my fault,” Father MacReady smoothly answers. “I told her you wouldn’t mind.” He hesitates, then nods in the direction of the second priest. “This is Father Rourke, from St. John’s Seminary in Boston. He came all the way up here to meet Faith.”

My cheeks burn with disappointment. “How could you! You were supposed to be on our side.” Father MacReady opens his mouth to apologize, but I won’t let him. “No. Don’t think you can say something that makes this all right, because you can’t.”

“Mariah, I didn’t have a choice. There’s a certain procedure we follow in the Catholic Church, and–“

“We’re not Catholic!”

Father Rourke gets to his feet quietly.

“No, you’re not. But your daughter has attracted the attention of a number of Catholic people. And the Church wants to make sure that they’re not being led astray.”

I have visions of crucifixions, of martyrs being burned at the stake. “Mariah, we’re not taking pictures,” says Father MacReady.

“We’re not going to broadcast the brand of Faith’s breakfast cereal on the evening news.

We just want to speak to her for a little while.”

Faith stands up and slips her hand into mine.

“It’s okay, Mom. Really.”

I look from my daughter’s face to the priests’. “Thirty minutes,” I say firmly. Then I fold my arms over my chest,

sit beside her, and prepare to bear witness.

Father Rourke might just as well pick up his diagnostic tests and his inkblots and head back home on the next Amtrak. He does not need the computer analysis to tell him that Faith White is not a child who has lost touch with reality,

that hers is not the behavior of a psychotic.

He glances at Father MacReady, picking through a decorative bowl of MandMore’s on the coffee table and extracting the yellow ones to pop into his mouth. The mother’s barely moved a muscle in over twenty minutes. Rourke is at a loss. The girl is not mentally ill, but she doesn’t seem to be particularly problematic from a religious standpoint either. It’s not as if she yaps about what God’s told her, like the woman he was sent to Plymouth to examine. In fact, mostly Faith White doesn’t say anything at all.