Keeping Faith: A Novel (32 page)

“”Now, wait a second!” the pope cries.

“I’ve lived a pious life and led the Catholic Church–but I have to live here while that lawyer gets a penthouse?”‘ Saint Peter nods. “Yes,” he says. “See, we’ve got plenty of popes up here. But this is the first time we’ve ever had a lawyer!”"

The conference room erupts into laughter–no one likes lawyer jokes more than lawyers. But Metz is equally aware that he could have read a perfectly dull legal statute aloud,

and if he’d expected his associates to find it funny, they would have been rolling on the floor.

At the sound of the intercom, he holds up a hand,

and the younger lawyers fall silent. “Peggy,”

Metz says to his secretary, “put him through.”

They watch him with expectant faces. “All right. Yes, I see.” Metz hangs up the receiver and folds his hands on the polished table.

“Gentlemen and lady,” he says, “the ex parte motion has been denied.”

He turns to Hunstead, his first associate.

“Call Colin White. Tell him to get himself into a good suit and meet me at the Grafton County Courthouse at two-thirty P.m.

Lee,” he says to a second man, “tip off the media. I want them to know the father thinks his daughter’s in danger.”

The two associates run off, leaving Metz alone with the third. “I’m sorry, Mr.

Metz,” Elkland says. “A lucky break would’ve been nice.”

Metz shrugs, collecting his papers and files. “Actually, I never expected the judge to rule in my favor.” He taps the legal pads on their edges, aligning them. “I only filed it so that the judge could deny it, and get that out of his system. Let’s face it–no small-town judge wants someone like me cruising into his courtroom. I’d much rather have Rothbottam use this motion as a pissing contest to show me who’s boss, instead of something intrinsic to the case.”

The associate is surprised. “Then this was just strategic? Isn’t the kid in danger?”

“Hell, who knows? Filing an ex parte motion keeps the father happy. Denying it keeps the judge happy. And you know what makes me happy?”

“Knowing that you’re going to win?”

Metz pats her shoulder. “I knew I hired you for a reason,” he says.

New Canaan, New Hampshire “The mother isn’t going to let you near Faith,”

Father MacReady says, watching the visiting priest move about the rectory’s tiny guest room. “I can’t blame her.”

Father Rampini turns in a smooth motion.

“Why not?”

“She’s Jewish. We’ve got no right to be there.”

“She’s spouting heresy,” Father Rampini corrects. “If we don’t have jurisdiction over the person making the claims, we at least can control what she says that misleads good Catholics.” He lifts a jacket and hangs it in the closet. “Surely you take issue with a female apparition?”

“No. The Church has accredited plenty of visions of Mary.”

“Are we talking about Mary? No. God in a dress, God as a mother.” Rampini frowns.

“You have no problem with this?”

Father MacReady turns away. He has taken vows that hold him to helping others for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t take away the occasional urge to plant a facer. He sits at the small table and drums his fingers on its surface, casually glancing at the stack of books Rampini has placed there and the Saint-A-Day desk calendar, open to November 7. Saint Albinus, he reads. If he remembers correctly, Saint Albinus killed an evil man by breathing into his face.

“Maybe God just looks different to a seven-year-old,” Father MacReady muses.

“Tell that to the children at Fatima,” Rampini says. “Three kids, who–unlike Faith White–all saw the same vision of Mary. They didn’t say she was wearing pants or smoking a hookah. They saw the Blessed Virgin the way she’s traditionally pictured.”

“But not everyone has traditional visions.

Saint Bernadette said the Virgin spoke to her in French patois.”

“Cultural resonance isn’t part and parcel of a vision. So what if the Virgin was speaking French to Bernadette? She was still too uneducated to know what Mary meant when she referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception.”

Rampini zips his duffel bag and slides it beneath the bed. “Everything you’ve told me and everything I’ve read suggests that this is a crock. It’s a hallucination, one the girl’s managed to pass along into a mild hysteria. If Faith White is seeing God, there’s no way He would appear in the form of a woman. Either an apparition is Jesus Christ or it is not.” He shrugs.

“I’m more likely to consider the visions satanic than divine.”

MacReady runs his finger along the tabletop,

scattering a fine layer of dust. “There’s concrete, objective proof.”

“Right. The resurrections and the healing. I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: I’ve read about Lourdes and Guadalupe and a hundred others, but in my lifetime I’ve yet to see a bona fide miracle worker.”

Joseph MacReady meets his gaze. “For a good Catholic, Father, you sound an awful lot like a Pharisee.”

I am still half asleep when I hear Ian,

speaking from the plane seat beside Faith. “I didn’t get to thank you.” I will my eyelids to stay slitted, and just listen.

Faith doesn’t answer him. “You did it,

didn’t you?” Ian presses. “You gave Michael those few minutes.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Ian shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe a lot of stuff.”

He grins. “Call me Ian.”

“Okay.” They stare at each other. Faith smooths down the front of her shirt, and Ian uncrosses his legs. “Ian? You can hold my mother’s hand if you want.”

Ian nods gravely. “Thank you.” He hesitates for a moment. “Can I hold yours?”

Faith slowly extends her hand, with the Band-Aid at its center. Ian slips his fingers around hers carefully. He does not examine the Band-Aid, doesn’t even give the supposed stigmata a second glance.

Maybe, just maybe, Faith has worked a miracle after all.

Millie Epstein opens the front door,

expecting to see Mariah and Faith back from their flight, and instead lays eyes on yet another man in a black shirt and backward collar.

“What are they doing in Rome? Cloning you fellows?”

Father Rampini draws himself up to his full five feet ten inches. “Ma’am, I’m here to speak to Faith White at the request of His Excellency, Bishop Andrews of Manchester.”

“Who asked him?” Millie says.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I find it highly unlikely that my daughter or granddaughter called His Highness–“

“His Excellency–“

“Whoever,” Millie interrupts. “Look.

We’ve had more priests around here than the St.

Patrick’s Day parade in New York.

I’m sure that one of them has the information you want. Have a nice day.”

She begins to wedge the door closed but is stopped by the priest’s foot. “Mrs …?”

“Epstein.”

“Mrs. Epstein, you’re interfering with the process of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Millie stares at him for a moment. “And your point is?”

By now Father Rampini is sweating. He wonders if he should have taken the insufferable Father MacReady up on his offer to accompany him to Faith White’s home. At the time, the thought of twenty minutes on back roads with the ridiculously liberal priest had seemed like more penance than any man of God should have to face. Of course, he hadn’t known about this particular dragon at the gate.

“All right,” he says, “why don’t you just get it over with?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t like me, Mrs. Epstein. You don’t like priests. Go ahead and tell me why.”

“You see? You hear my name, know I’m Jewish, and assume I’m prejudiced.”

Father Rampini grits his teeth. “My apologies. Is Faith available?”

“No.”

“What a surprise,” he says dryly.

Millie crosses her arms. “Now I’m a liar? Next you’re going to assume I’m some kind of shyster moneylender, I suppose?”

“No more than I’m a Bing Crosby look-alike who drinks too much and seduces altar boys,” Rampini says tightly. “Now,

I could always go ask for the cooperation of that police captain at the end of the driveway.”

“Fortunately, we already fought the war to separate church and state,” Millie says.

“My granddaughter isn’t home, thanks to all of you.”

Rampini feels a muscle tic at the base of his jaw. This is the resurrected grandmother? And what did she mean by “all of you”?

Who had driven the girl away?

He looks into her feisty, lined face and sees, in a flicker of her eye, a monumental sadness that it has come to this. For a moment he even feels guilty. “Mrs. Epstein, maybe if you set forth some guidelines, I can take them back to the bishop and we can compromise on the best way to examine Faith without upsetting her …

or you.”

The woman snorts. “You think I was born yesterday?”

“Actually, from what I’ve heard, that’s not so far off the mark.”

“Where’s the other one? The nice priest?”

Millie looks around the front yard for a sign of Father MacReady. “Mariah likes him.”

Then she narrows her eyes. “Are you two doing a good-copstbad-cop thing?”

By now Father Rampini has a headache. He thinks this woman might have done very well on their side, during the Inquisition. “We aren’t partners. I swear to God.”

“Oh?” Millie says. “Yours or mine?”

It has been a two-hour ride from Boston,

but the heating system in the silver rental car has not warmed me at all. In the rearview mirror I can see Ian’s rental, a black Taurus, driving behind me. We decided that it would be best to arrive separately. Otherwise,

how do we explain why we’re coming home together?

“Lies,” I mutter. “More and more lies.”

“Ma?” Faith’s voice comes, drowsy and rich.

“You have a good nap?” I capture her attention in the mirror and smile. “There’s something we have to talk about. When I get home, I’m going to have to leave you with grandma and go visit the lawyer.”

Faith sits up. “Does it have to do with Daddy again?”

“In a way. He wants you to live with him.

And I want you to live with me. So a nice judge is going to decide where you ought to be.”

“How come nobody wants to know what I think?”

“I want to know,” I say.

But now that she’s on the spot, Faith hedges.

“Do I have to pick just one of you forever?”

“I hope not, Faith.” Hesitating, I consider how best to phrase this next sentence.

“Since a lot of people are going to be watching us while the judge decides, it might be best if you … told God … that you need to keep Her a secret for a little while.”

“Like when we were at the cabin.”

Not quite, I think. Faith failed pretty miserably at keeping her light under a bushel.

“God says it’s no one’s business.”

But that’s wrong. It is a business, a booming one of donations and salvation and even atheism. “Just do this for me, Faith,” I say wearily.

“Please.”

She is quiet for a moment. Then I feel her hand slip through the narrow slat of the headrest, into my hair, to rub the muscles of my neck.

Ian arrives at the house a half hour before Mariah, having driven straight through during the time she stopped at McDonald’s to get Faith a snack. He turns his car into the street, stunned at how the crowd has grown. All the network affiliates have vans there, there’s some group with a banner, and the cult hasn’t given up its stronghold around the mailbox. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the sea of eager faces that have come to be healed or touched or blessed.

He slips into his own small knot of production personnel unobtrusively,

simply because it is so crowded. James is nowhere to be seen. His assistants fall into file behind him, but he shoos them away when he reaches the Winnebago. “Not now, y’all. Let me catch my breath.”

But inside, he only paces. He waits until the commotion outside reaches him like a current on the air, and then he exits the Winnebago and watches, from a distance, as Faith and Mariah get out of their car.

She’s dazed, he can see from here. She hustles Faith to the house, shielding her from view, although there is no way to block out the roar of a crowd that has waited on the child for a week. But she only trades her daughter off to Millie,