Keeping Faith: A Novel (25 page)

“You’re with who?” her mother had said.

“I know, I know. But we’re going to leave.”

At that point Mariah had spotted the number of a local taxi service, etched into the wall of the pay-phone booth. “I’ll call you when we find a place to settle.”

As she speaks to the taxi dispatcher, she feels a thread of guilt drawing tight. Ian Fletcher has been nothing less than solicitous up to this point. For whatever reason,

it is possible that his TV persona’s ruthlessness is only an act.

Still, she isn’t going to stick around to find out.

Faith is sitting on the floor, picking at dead bugs, when Mariah hangs up. The taxi will arrive in ten minutes. “What are you doing?

You’re going to be filthy.”

“I want candy. I’m hungry.”

Mariah digs into her pocket for fifty cents. “That’s it. Get whatever you can for this amount.” She wipes the sweat off her forehead and watches Faith choose peanut MandMore’s, hand them to the man working behind the counter. He smiles at Mariah; she smiles back.

“You’re not from around here,” the man says.

Mariah thinks she’s going to be sick. “What makes you say that?”

He laughs. “I pretty much know everyone in town, and you’re not one of those people. You get your taxi all right?”

He must have overheard her conversation. Mariah feels her mind spin into action. “Yes … my,

uh, husband had an errand to run, and he was supposed to pick us up here after I made a phone call. But I think my daughter’s running a fever, and I want to get her back to the motel … so we’re just going to take a cab.”

“I’d be happy to tell him where you went, when he comes looking.”

“That would be great,” Mariah says, edging toward the door, wanting nothing more than to cut short this conversation. “Honey, why don’t we wait outside?”

“Good idea,” the man says, although she hasn’t included him in the invitation. “Wouldn’t mind a little fresh air myself.”

Resigned, Mariah walks out the glass door of the gas station and stands next to the pump,

shading her eyes to see down the road for anything that remotely resembles a cab. But from the opposite direction a car speeds into the station,

stopping a few feet away from them.

Ian gets out of the passenger seat, thrilled to have spotted Mariah and Faith. “Hey there.”

He smiles at Mariah. “Looking for a ride home?”

“Hope you got some roses, brother,” the gas-station attendant says. “You’re in the doghouse.”

Ian continues to smile, puzzled, but all he can think of is something Faith once said, that her mother sneezes at roses. Before Mariah can stop her,

Faith gets into the backseat of the car and sees the pile of bags on the floor. “What’s this?”

“Presents. For you and your mama.”

Faith pulls out the Tweety legging set, and a package of barrettes, and a sweatshirt with hearts all around the neckline. Then she tugs free a shirt that is clearly the right size for Mariah.

This is where he went this morning? To buy them all clothes?

“Guess you won’t be needing the taxi,” the attendant says. “I’ll call the dispatcher.”

“That … would be wonderful,” Mariah manages.

Ian waves at the man, then gets into the car.

Mariah slides into the front seat as well.

“Guess y’all wanted to take a little walk around town,” he says evenly. “I just happened to see you as I was driving by.”

Faith pipes up from the backseat. “Good, because I was getting tired of walking.”

Mariah tries to read an accusation in his words,

tries to make him into the sort of man she had naturally assumed he was. He turns to her.

“Course, I can take Faith back, if you’d still like to walk a spell.”

“No,” she says, to him and to herself. “This’ll be just fine.”

New Canaan, New Hampshire–

October 22, 1999 Some people blamed it on the taxi driver who took the young Father Rourke to the train station.

Others said it was clearly a reporter snooping.

Months later, no one clearly remembered how word leaked from the visiting priest’s files to those gathered outside Mariah White’s house, but suddenly they all knew that the God Faith White was seeing happened to be female.

The Associated Press reporter’s three-paragraph story ran in newspapers from L.a. to New York. Jay Leno did an irreverent monologue about a female Jesus being worried about the fashion statement made by a crown of thorns. A new group of devotees arrived on the edge of the White property, letting their dismay over Faith’s absence only slightly dampen their enthusiasm. Numbering about one hundred, they came from Catholic colleges and church ladies’ guilds and taught at parochial schools. Some had fought to be ordained as female priests, but had not succeeded. Armed with Bibles and texts by Naomi Wolf, they unrolled a hastily painted MOTHERGOD SOCIETY banner and very loudly chanted the Lord’s Prayer in unison,

changing the pronouns where necessary. They held up posters with photos retouched to look like holy cards and others that read YOU GO, GIRL!

They were bonded and raucous, like a women’s hockey team, although most of the other followers camped outside did not consider them dangerous.

But then again, they did not know that the MotherGod Society had left another hundred members spread up and down cities on the East Coast,

handing out pamphlets emblazoned with their amended Lord’s Prayer and Faith White’s name and address.

Manchester, NH–OCTOBER 22, 1999 “What in the name of Saint Francis is this?” Bishop Andrews asks, recoiling from the pink pamphlet as if it were a rattlesnake.

“”Our Mother, who art in Heaven?”‘ Who wrote this garbage?”

“It’s a new Catholic group, your Excellency,” says Father DeSoto.

“They’re promoting an alleged New Hampshire visionary.”

“Why does this sound familiar?”

“Because you spoke to Monsignor O’Shaughnessy about her a week ago. Father Rourke–the pastoral psychologist from St. John’s–sent you his report by fax.”

Bishop Andrews has not read the report.

He spent the morning marching in the Pope Pius XII Parochial School’s homecoming parade, positioned in an antique Ford in front of a very large percussion band that gave him a headache that has not yet gone away. Father DeSoto hands him a piece of paper.

“”Definite lack of psychotic behavior …” He’s too open-minded for his own good,”

Andrews mutters, then picks up the phone and dials the Boston seminary.

A female God. For Pete’s sake!

Why send a pastoral psychologist, when this is clearly a case for a theologian?

Lake Perry, Kansas–October 22,

That afternoon, Ian and Faith are playing hearts when Mariah falls asleep on the couch. One moment she is talking to them, and then the next, just like that, she’s snoring. Ian watches her neck swan to the side, listens to the soft snore from her throat. God, he’s jealous. To just be able to drift off like that … in the middle of the day …

Faith shuffles the cards and manages to send them flying. “Hey, Mr. Fletcher,” she says, scrambling to pick them up, her voice strident.

“Sssh!” Ian nods toward the couch. “Your mama’s asleep.” He knows that having Faith in close, confined quarters with Mariah means it’s more likely than not to be a quick rest. “How’d you like to go outside?” he whispers.

Faith pulls a face. “I don’t want to play in the grass again. I did that this morning.”

“I recall promising you some fishing.” Ian remembers seeing an old rod and reel gathering dust in the shed beside the manager’s office. “We could give that a try.”

Faith glances from Ian to Mariah. “I don’t think she’d want me to go.”

Of course not, Ian thinks. Faith might unwittingly tip her hand. “A quick trip, then.

What your mama doesn’t know isn’t gonna hurt her.” He stands up and stretches.

“Well, I’m gonna do some fishing anyway.”

“Wait! I just have to get on my shoes.”

He shrugs, pretending not to care whether he has company. But this is the first time he’s been alone with Faith White, except for the night she ran away bleeding. There’s so damn much he wants to know about her, he doesn’t even know where to start.

It’s crisp and cool outside, and the sun is hanging heavy in the sky. He walks with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, pretending not to notice how hard Faith is huffing and puffing to keep up with him. Retrieving the fishing rod and a small gardener’s spade, Ian strikes out toward the lake.

He squats at the edge near a patch of cattails and offers Faith the small shovel.

“You want to dig, or shall I?”

“You mean, like, for worms?”

“No, for buried treasure. What’d you think we were gonna use as bait?”

Faith takes the spade and makes a halfhearted attempt to overturn the thick marsh grass. Ian stares at the Band-Aids still on her hands, one on the outside and one on the inside of each palm. He, of course, has studied case histories of alleged stigmatics–in his profession, you have to know the competition. He remembers reading how painful the wounds are supposed to be, not that he really ever bought it. Still,

he wrests the shovel from Faith. “Let me,”

he says gruffly.

He unearths a chunk of grass, peeling it back like a scalp to reveal several purple worms pulsing through the dirt. Faith wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

“Not if you’re a largemouth bass.” He gathers a few in a small plastic bag and directs Faith toward the dock. “You go on over there. Take the rod with you.”

He finds her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the water. “Your mama finds you like that,

she’s going to pitch a fit.”

Faith glances back over her shoulder. “The only way she’d find out is if you told her I’d come out here with you, and then she’d be too angry at you to yell at me.”

“Guess we’re partners in crime, then.”

Ian reaches out a hand to help her stand. “So–you know how to cast? Your daddy ever take you fishing?”

“Nope. Did yours?”

Just like that, his hand stills on Faith’s. She’s squinting up at him, her face partially hidden by shadows. “No,” he says. “I don’t reckon he did.” He puts his arms around Faith from behind and closes his hands on hers. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft; he can feel her shoulder blades bumping against his chest. “Like this.” He tips back the rod and lets the line fly.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

He sits beside Faith as she digs her thumbnail into the grooves in the planking of the dock. She lifts her face toward the setting sun and closes her eyes, and Ian finds himself mesmerized by the tiny beat in the hollow of her throat. There’s a quiet between them he is almost unwilling to break, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “”Follow me,”“ he says softly, watching for her reaction, “”and I will make you fishers of men.””

She turns her head toward him. “Huh?”

“It’s a saying. An old one.”

“It’s stupid. You don’t fish for men.”

“You ought to ask God about it sometime,” Ian suggests, leaning back and covering his eyes with his forearm, just enough that he can peek out and still see her.

Faith frowns, on the verge of saying something,

but then she stops and picks at the wood of the dock again. Ian finds himself straining forward, waiting for a confession, but whatever Faith might have said is lost to the sudden jerk of the rod and her squeal of delight. He shows her how to reel in her catch,

a beauty of a fish that’s every bit of three pounds.

Then he unhooks the bass and rounds open its mouth, so that Faith can grab hold.

“Oh,” she breathes, the tail of the fish snugging against her stomach. She’s a picture, Ian thinks, smiling. With her hair caught in the late sun and dirt streaked across her cheek, he looks at her and truly sees her not as a story, but simply as a little girl.

The fish starts to thrash its tail, fighting for freedom. “Look at how– Oh!” Faith cries, and she drops the bass–the last thing Ian sees before she loses her footing and falls from the dock into the freezing water.

Mariah awakens to her worst nightmare: Ian Fletcher has disappeared with Faith. Bolting upright on the couch, she screams for her daughter,

knowing by the stillness in the small cabin that they are gone. A deck of cards lies scattered across the rug, as if he’s taken her in the middle of everything, as if he’s taken her by force.